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Freethinking and Plainspeaking. 



LONDON : PEINTED BY 

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARB 

AND PARLIAMENT STREET 



ESSAYS 



ON 



Freethinking and Plainspeaking. 



BY 



, 



LESLIE STEPHEN. 




LONDON : 

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

1873. 



All rights reserved. 



DEDICATION. 






My dear Norton, 

I venture to dedicate this book to you in memory 
of a friendly intercourse never, I trust, to be forgotten 
by me ; and in gratitude for its fruitfulness in that 
best kind of instruction which is imparted unconsciously 
to the giver. 

Your affectionate friend, 

LESLIE STEPHEN, 
To C, E. Norton, Esq. 

Cambridge, Mass. 



NOTICE. 

The first eight chapters of this volume are re- 
productions, with more or less modification, of 
articles which have appeared in Fraser's Magazine 
and the Fortnightly Review. The last chapter has 
not been hitherto published. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTE 


R 


PAGE 


I. 


The Broad Church , 


1 


II. 


Religion as a Fine Art X. 


. 41 


III. 


Darwinism and L^t^ni/n^ VVx^^\yv 


_s\JL 72 


IV. 


Are We Christians ? 


. 110 


V. 


A Bad Five Minutes in the Alps 


155 


VI. 


Shaftesbury's ' Characteristics ' . 


. 108 


VII. 


Mandeville's ' Fable of the Bees.' 


. 243 


VIII. 


Warburton 


. 279 


IX. 


An ApoLoor for Plainspeaking 


. :J26 



FREETHINKING and PLAtNSPEAKING. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE BROAD CHUECH» 

Not long ago, a letter was published in the news- 
papers from a distinguished resident at Cambridge. 
In it he assigned certain reasons which induced him to 
give up his position as a clergyman, so far as the state 
of the law enabled him to do so. He had to declare, 
he said, at his ordination as a deacon, that he e un-* 
feignedly believed in the canonical Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testament ; ' but he could not now make 
that declaration, i taking the words in their natural 
sense.' Other expressions in the Prayer-book evidently 
assume the untenable doctrine of the infallibility of the 
Bible, whereas some portions of the Scriptures seemed to 
him to contain errors in fact, and questionable teaching 
in morality. Further, there were certain expressions in 
the Liturgy which he could no longer use. He could 
not stand beside the altar and say ' God spake these 
words ' when he was convinced that God did not speak 

B 



2 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

them. Holding these views, he could not, as an 
honourable man, continue to occupy a position which 
necessarily involved a certain amount of insincerity ; 
and it would be impertinent to pay him any compli- 
ments on obeying the dictates of his conscience. 

In this every one will, of course, agree. Any one 
who believed, whether rightly or mistakenly, that he 
could not at the same time officiate as a clergyman and 
speak the truth, would be bound to officiate no longer; 
or, if we may not assume so much, we may at least 
say that a man who refuses to officiate from a regard to 
truth is guilty of nothing worse than a pardonable error 
or an amiable weakness. There is, however, a further 
question, which may be fairly discussed. The Broad 
Church party have a very natural dislike to the course 
of conduct adopted by this gentleman. They hold 
opinions strongly resembling his, or, it may be, in 
some respects identical ; but they do not see — what he 
saw so forcibly — the incompatibility between holding 
those opinions and retaining the position of a clergy- 
man. His action, therefore, forms an awkward 
precedent, and tends to abridge the liberty which they 
at present enjoy. It has been decided, they urge, by 
the highest legal authorities, that a man may continue 
to act as a clergyman who does not believe in the 
infallibility of the Scriptures; who holds that they 
may contain erroneous statements both of facts and of 
morality ; and who by no means believes that the 
account given in the Pentateuch of the promulgation 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 8 

of the Ten Commandments is to be taken as a literal 
historical truth. Mr. Wilson, for example, asserted 
in plain terms in one of the Essays and Revieics that 
there was a ( dark crust of human error and passion 
over many parts of the Bible ; ' yet the prosecution 
directed against him, and supported by all the elo^- 
quence and learning of skilled advocates, left him in 
possession of his living, and therefore determined, as 
far as a les:al decision could determine, that a clero-y- 
man is not bound, whatever may be the ( natural sense 
of the words,' to hold the obnoxious doctrine. It is 
only to be expected that a different mode of action 
should be unpalatable to gentlemen whe value and 
make constant use of the privilege thus secured. It 
amounts, in their opinion, to an admission that vague 
popular interpretations are to be allowed to supersede 
legal decisions ; and that a man may be expelled — not 
because he is convicted of disputing the formularies of 
the Church in the sense affixed to them by the legiti- 
mate authorities ; but because he disputes the sense 
affixed to them by ignorant party prejudice. Men 
who value the Church of England above all things for 
the wide comprehension which results in their opinion 
from its connection with the State, and its subordina- 
tion to secular tribunals, may well be jealous of any 
concession, even in appearance, to popular clamour. 

This argument raises a question of the highest im- 
portance to the future of the Church of England ; and 
of some interest even to persons outside the sacred 

B 2 



4 FREETHINKING AND PLA1NSPEAKING. 

pale. The theory of the Broad Church party is that 
the legal restrictions upon the clergy are the measure 
of the moral restrictions. The law, and the law alone, 
decides upon the tests which ought to be imposed; and 
the law must determine the sense in which they are to 
be taken. It is decided, for example, that the profes- 
sion of unfeigned belief in the canonical Scriptures 
does not mean to assert an unfeigned belief of the 
absolute truth and accuracy of every statement in the 
Bible. A man who makes that profession only avows 
what the law says that he avows-; and whatever sense the 
words may convey to an uncultivated understanding, 
he is not guilty of the slightest insincerity in using 
them in the sense put upon them by their authorised 
interpreters. If an assertion that God is God and 
Mahomet is his prophet should be declared by those 
who imposed it to mean a belief in Christianity, it 
might doubtless be taken in that sense by a scru- 
pulously honest man. Hence it clearly follows that no 
one has a right to accuse a clergyman of insincerity so 
long as he takes the test in the legal sense. I may be 
privately of opinion that certain dignitaries not only 
hold doctrines which are logically incompatible with 
some assertions in the Articles ; but that they use 
words in a very odd fashion. But I am not thereby 
authorised to impute to them the very slightest 
degree of dishonesty, equivocation, or mental reserva- 
tion. And, as a matter of fact, no reasonably candid 
person doubts that many members of the very wide 



THE BROAD CHURCH. o 

party generally described as the Broad Church, are 
as honourable in every sense of the word as men 
can be. There is, however, a further question which 
must be left to every man's own conscience. It does 
not follow that because the law allows a certain liberty, 
it is right or wise to take advantage of it. The law 
may say that by professing a belief in the canonical 
Scriptures, I only imply a modified belief in an un- 
certain part of them. But a man may feel that by 
using such words he is conveying a false impression to 
his hearers, and is propagating a doctrine from which 
he inwardly revolts. When he reads the Psalms or 
the Commandments in church, he is perhaps taken in 
law to assert nothing more than a general respect for 
their authors, such as he might feel for Dante or 
Socrates ; if, however, his action helps to strengthen 
ninety-nine people out of a hundred in the belief, 
which he does not share, that they possess a super- 
natural and infallible authority, he might properly 
refuse to take part in the ceremony. Admitting that 
he has some duty to those whose privileges will be 
endangered by his resignation, he has also a primary 
and, it may be, a conflicting duty of not taking part in 
the spread of error and superstition. In short, it is 
one thing to take a test, and another to assume all the 
responsibilities involved in the position of a clergyman. 
We have no right of any sort to blame anybody who 
is not breaking the law; but we may fairly discuss the 
policy of using the freedom it confers. 



6 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

I mention this, merely to evade the inference that, 
in what follows, I mean to cast the slightest blame 
upon any one for taking what may be a mistaken, but 
certainly not a dishonest, view of his position and 
responsibilities. And, assuming that there is no ques- 
tion as to the action of any individuals, I may venture 
to speak of a problem which often perplexes outsiders. 
Men who believe that many of the popular views of 
Christianity are erroneous and immoral, but who be- 
lieve nevertheless that Christianity in some sense will 
be the ultimate religion of the world, are in a very 
difficult position. Should they use the old formulas and 
trust that they will gradually purify themselves from 
that : crust of human error,' or should they break with 
the old state of things and try a fresh start ? Is it a 
time for adaptation or for entire reconstruction ? Will 
they have the best standing-ground by demanding 
reform from within or from without ? Is there vitality 
enough in the existing organisation to give promise of 
a renewed vigour when it is freed from the dead 
excrescences which hamper and impede its growth ; or 
must they decide that the constraints which it imposes 
more than counterbalance the advantages which it 
offers ? There is always fair ground for hesitation at 
such a period as the present. It is difficult to decide 
the precise point of time at which wise conservatism 
passes into obstructiveness. Many of the best men 
amongst us will have the tenderest attachment to the 
old beliefs and be most reluctant to give up even the 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 7 

old phraseology. Whatever claims are still possessed 
by the Church of England to the allegiance of think- 
ing men are due to the Broad Church element amongst 
the clergy. In evangelicism the old Puritanic element 
has become thin and sour ; whilst Ritualism is surely 
the most vapid form of sacerdotalism ever imposed 
upon effeminate natures. Adherents of both phases of 
opinion may have great merits in point of practical zeal. 
But were it not that a party of equal sincerity and greater 
breadth of view still remains within the Church, it would 
be hard for any male person of liberal views to have 
anything to do with it. Such a man would stand 
aside and let the dead bury their dead. He would 
be curious to know how long a creed could retain its 
vitality after the brains had been taken out, but 
would take little interest in the precise details of the 
decay which must inevitably ensue. 

There is, however, a much higher interest involved 
than that of any Church whatever. The Church of 
England may hold together or it may gradually die of 
inanition or split into hostile fragments. The world 
would survive even if Anglicanism were a thing of the 
past, and would probably find itself much better off 
than clergymen expect. Whatever happens, the reli- 
gious instincts of mankind will survive and will find 
some mode of expression. Whether they take such a 
form as is expected by the followers of Comte, or 
return to the ancient modes of thought, they have a 
vitality independent of any existing organisation. We 



8 FREETHINKING AND PLA1NSPJEAKING. 

are, however, passing through a great change, of 
which no living man can expect to witness the end or 
even the beginning of the end. How is it to be 
brought about with the least shock to morality and 
lofty sentiment ; and how are the ideas already familiar 
to educated people to be propagated through less 
cultivated classes with the least possible injury to 
the vital parts of their faith ? Innumerable cases of 
conscience constantly arise from this condition of 
opinion, the solution of which is not always evident. 
Am I to say, for example, openly, that the history of 
the promulgation of the Jewish Law is nothing but a 
popular legend, when ignorant persons will suppose 
that I mean to strike at the very foundation of morals? 
The proposition that God did not give the Ten Com- 
mandments to Moses in the thunders of Mount Sinai 
will be understood to mean that there is no divine 
sanction condemning murder, false witness, and adul- 
tery. Is not silence in such a case better than a rash 
proclamation of a bare truth, which without the neces- 
sary corollaries and qualifications may be practically 
equivalent to a falsehood ? Difficulties more or less 
resembling this are very frequent, and it would be 
useless to deny that they are real difficulties. But I 
imagine that one conclusion is plain enough in theory, 
though not always carried out in practice. Whatever 
reticence may be desirable, we ought not to tell lies, 
or to countenance the telling lies. The greatest dan- 
ger to which we are exposed at the present moment is 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 9 

not that people find the old faiths failing them., but 
that they begin to doubt that there is anywhere such 
a thing to be found as faith in anything. A father 
naturally shrinks from telling his children that the 
biblical stories which they hear at school or from their 
mother are not undoubted truths. A clever child 
probably strikes out some little fragment of scepticism ; 
he doubts whether all the animals in the Zoological 
Gardens could have been got into the ark ; or whether 
Samson could have found the jaw-bone of an ass so 
effective a weapon as is represented in the Bible. His 
parent probably tells him that good little boys believe 
all that their masters say. Presently the boy grows 
towards manhood and learns without much trouble 
that Samson's jawbone and Noah's ark are reckoned 
amongst childish fables by his own father and by all 
sensible men. The discovery gives a much greater 
shock to his faith than he would have received from 
an originally frank explanation, and had he always 
believed that the adventures of Samson were as little 
to be relied upon and had as little to do with rational 
religion as the adventures of Hercules. He begins to 
disco ver, or to think he disco vers, that religions are 
preached, not because they are true, but because they 
are a highly convenient substitute for police regula- 
tions. There may be no such place as hell, but we 
can't afford to let the criminal classes into the secret. 
We all make-believe as hard as we possibly can ; we 
go to church with the most praiseworthy punctuality ; 



10 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

we shake our heads at the preacher's lamentations 
over the progress of rationalism ; and some of us go 
home to lunch and treat the whole history as Socrates 
treated the polytheism of his time. It was highly use- 
ful, but not worth arguing seriously with intelligent 
people. ~No one who has any knowledge of the kind 
of language held by intelligent men when not arrayed 
in surplices or cassocks, will doubt that such senti- 
ments are exceedingly common. It is only a few 
who have the iconoclastic temperament and desire to 
break down the convenient old creeds, because they 
may be rotten at the core ; but a large minority, or 
possibly a large majority, believe that they are rotten, 
and that by a sudden crash or a slower process of 
decay, they will disappear or undergo some profound 
transformation. Such a state of mind, it may be said, 
is by no means a novelty. But if by no means a 
novelty, it possesses a new significance. The argu- 
ment of Christian apologists has undergone a singular 
change. The old advocates of orthodox opinions said, 
in substance, Believe this because it is true. The 
sum and substance of most modern advocacy is, Be- 
lieve this, true or not true, because its falsehood 
cannot be mathematically demonstrated. It is hard 
indeed to find what is the ultimate foundation upon 
which most modern controversialists would rest their 
arguments in the last resort. They play so many 
tricks with faith and reason that we are puzzled to 
say in what name they speak. The whole tendency of 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 11 

a large and zealous school is to deny the competence of 
reason, which when put into plain English and stripped 
of all the ingenious logical devices by which we may be 
perplexed and thrown off the scent, amounts pretty 
much to denying that the question whether a doctrine 
is or is not true, is a relevant argument in deciding 
whether we are to believe it. Be a Roman Catholic 
or you are certain to become an atheist, is simply an 
argument for atheism. It means that all fair methods 
of argument applicable in other cases will lead you to 
atheism. The ingenious inference, which by an odd 

1 inversion of meaning claims to be peculiarly logical, is 
that as two and two will make four if you persist in 
adding them, you should refrain from adding them. 

J ( Do you not see,' said one controversialist to another, 
e that the inevitable inference from your opinions is so 
and so ? ' ' Probably,' was the reply, ( but I do not 
draw it.' This method of reasoning, which consists in 
frightening a man out of all reasoning by exhibiting 
its logical conclusion, may answer for a time with some 
people, but its final result must be ruinous. It means 
that our religious faiths are to be cut off from all solid 
groundwork of fact and be cultivated as a poetical 
sentiment or a taste for the fine arts without any 
reference to reality. The application of the principle 
to history naturally follows. The apologists do not 
attempt to prove that the events recorded in the Bible 
really happened, or possess such evidence as would 
convince a reasonable man : but confine themselves to 



12 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

showing that it is not proved that they did not happen. 
We can believe them without encountering any invin- 
cible shock to our credulity, if we try very hard to 
believe them ; and that is quite enough for our imagi- 
nations, if we are not wicked enough to be troublesome 
with our critical faculties. Religion, in short, is so 
beautiful a thing ; it gives such fine scope for our best 
emotions ; it affords such healthy exercise for the soul, 
that we ought to believe all the dogmas upon which it 
is founded without looking closely upon the evidence. 

When language approaching to this, though neither 
so frank nor extravagant, is openly talked, it is in fact a 
concession to the covert scepticism of which I have 
spoken. Christianity, says the freethinker, is very 
good for women and children and clergymen ; but it is 
not worth the serious discussion of educated men. Put- 
ting this sentiment into a decent theological dress, it is 
the equivalent of the theological assertion, that religion 
is a matter of faith and not of reason. The two parties 
may be perfectly harmonious ; and a kind of tacit com- 
pact may be arranged in virtue of which we may talk 
as we please in private, but allow the clergy to have 
their say in public, and affect to shrug our shoulders 
at Voltaire and his more scientific successors. 

Such an arrangement is common enough. I need 
not here argue that it is essentially immoral and must 
ultimately be ruinous to the creed which accepts so 
treacherous a support. The Broad Church, however, 
distinguish themselves by repudiating any such com- 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 13 

promise in theory. They tell us with a frankness 
which does them honour, that the Bible records must 
be tested by every method which the ingenuity of 
critics has discovered, and that they do not ask us to 
accept it unless it will stand an examination as search- 
ing as we should demand in the case of profane history : 
or, as Mr. Jowett forcibly put it, that the Bible must be 
criticised ' like any other book.' They assert further 
that Christianity must be divine because its moral 
teaching is incomparably purer than any other creed, 
and includes and reconciles all the half-thoughts of 
merely human creatures ; they admit that if these 
propositions could not be established, if it could be 
proved that the Christian morality were imperfect or 
positively erroneous, Ave should be bound to reject it. 
They confess that the ultimate test of religious truth 
must lie in its conformity to our moral sense and the 
historical accuracy of the assertions upon which it is 
founded. They therefore ask for our belief on straight- 
forward grounds and do not seek to perplex the ques- 
tion by irrelevant appeals to considerations which could 
, have no weight in the court of pure reason. Every 
fair reasoner is therefore bound to respect them even 
if (as is the case with me) he is compelled to reject 
their conclusions. If they are not allies they are satis- 
factory antagonists. They have a common ground 
with all who are anxious to discover the truth at all 
hazards, and are anxious for nothing else. So long as 
they act up to their principles they can do nothing but 



14 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

good. A man who is led to the right conclusions by 
the right methods is doubtless the most useful ; but 
next to him is the man whose conclusions are wrong, 
though his methods are right. If every man would 
speak candidly and we could all agree upon the canons 
by which our opinions are to be judged, we should 
reach a fair unanimity with surprising rapidity. I 
imagine that educated men are much nearer agreement 
than is generally supposed ; though unluckily we have 
got into such habits of conscious or unconscious decep- 
tion of ourselves and others that it is difficult to disinter 
a man's genuine faith from the masses of conventional 
language and insincere dogma under which it is habitu- 
ally covered. The great merit of Broad Churchmen 
is that they try to meet argument fairly, and admit in 
theory the importance of searching, fair, and unfet- 
tered inquiry. If they admitted it in practice as well 
as in theory, there would be no more to be said. 

Is there then anything about them which may lead us 
to believe not that they are consciously insincere but 
that they do not in practice allow free play to the 
convictions thus stated ? 

To this it must be answered that there is one cause 
of bewilderment to everybody who has studied the 
writings of the school. We have to believe in a 
miracle as singular as that by which the British 
Constitution has been, at every stage in its develop- 
ment, the pride and envy of the world. Our thrice- 
blessed system is as we all know the product of a 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 15 

series of compromises, accidents, and bit by bit re- 
forms, carried out on no definite principle but by a 
sort of indefinite rule of thumb ; and yet the result 
of all this patching and piecing, this hammering and 
tinkering, has always been a kind of embodiment of 
perfect wisdom. It would have antecedently seemed 
almost as likely as that a house which had been inha- 
bited by a series of tenants, each of whom had thrown 
out a window or added a closet wherever it seemed 
good to him, should exhibit the perfect symmetry and 
adaptation to its purposes of the Parthenon. One 
consequence of such theories is at any rate rather 
shocking to people who believe that truthfulness and 
simplicity have their value even in the sphere of poli- 
tics, and share Mr. Carlyle's contempt for shams. A 
large part of the constitutional machinery has been 
preserved, although it has become useless for any 
intelligible purposes. We are assured, however, by 
adepts in political mysteries, that a good constitution 
ought to consist of two parts — a showy outside to 
impose upon the vulgar, and some really efficient 
machinery to carry on business. It should resemble 
some of the buildings erected at the lowest ebb 
of architecture, where all the structural parts were 
carefully concealed behind a vast screen intended to 
look magnificent. That such a system is inevitable at 
times and may be endured in preference to a revolu- 
tion is an intelligible creed ; but it does seem strange 
that any one should openly hold it up as the quint- 



16 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

essence of legislative wisdom. There are some symp- 
toms that this device is beginning to lose its prestige ; 
and rash people dare hint that a government need not 
command less respect because it is all intended pri- 
marily for work as well as for show. 

Few people, however, have learnt this lesson in the 
analogous case. Our creed still contains a vast num- 
ber of obsolete dogmas which are kept for show instead 
of for use. If any rash person dares to denounce 
them, a cry is raised in all quarters against his sacri- 
legious presumption. The tares and the wheat, or, to 
speak more plainly, the truths and the humbugs, are 
so intricately mixed that we dare not touch one lest 
the other should suffer. It is an ingenious plan and 
may answer for a time ; but it has its dangers. There 
may come a time when inquiry will be too late and the 
whole constitution be injured because we have obsti- 
nately averted our eyes from the unpleasant symptoms 
of decay. The Thirty-nine Articles are the product 
of a series of compromises of thought and legislation 
as strange as those to which the British constitution is 
owing ; and yet, like our secular legislation, they are 
confidently asserted to contain the highest expression 
of wisdom that the human brain can comprehend. 
They are an expression of the views about theology 
current in this part of the British islands in the six- 
teenth century ; they embody all sorts of dogmas 
which have floated down from distant ages, the sense 
of many of them entirely evaporating on the road ; 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 17 

they represent the best available compromise which 
could be struck out under the circumstances of the 
time ; and it need not be said that the whole cur- 
rent of modern thought has ebbed away from many of 
the questions discussed and left nothing but the bare 
husks of extinct opinions which for ordinary Englisn- 
men have next to no significance. Next comes a 
gentleman of great Candour and abilities, thoroughly 
versed in all modern philosophy, who professes to have 
started from first principles, to have worked out his 
conclusions without fear or favour ; to have followed the 
united teaching of reason and revelation wherever it led 
him ; and behold ! he discovers that these Articles ex- 
actly express his very deepest convictions in the most 
unequivocal language. When such a phenomenon 
occurs, as it sometimes does, I must confess it gives me a 
very unpleasant sensation. One of two conclusions is 
inevitable. Either there is a coincidence which may 
almost be called miraculous; if Lord Bacon or the 
wisest man of his time, whoever he was, had drawn up 
a scheme of politics, we should now have pronounced 
j it defective and erroneous, and altogether beside the 
modern modes of thought ; theology has undergone a 
change not less profound and extensive ; yet this 
' formula, drawn up by men ignorant of our modern 
; doubts and convictions, turns out to be so flexible or 
jto have such vitality that it exactly expresses the 
ripest conclusions of an eminent modern thinker, — a 
I result which is to me as singular as if the strategics of 

c 



18 FEEETHINKING AND PLA1NSPEAKING. 

days before, gunpowder were precisely suitable for the 
of ironclads and Henry rifles. Or else — and I 
confess this is the only conclusion at which I could 
arrive — the eminent modern thinker, like many other 
eminent men, has been unconsciously biassed in his 
reasonings by the desire to reach certain foregone con- 
clusions. 

It is this constantly recurring difficulty which is 
destroying the influence of the Broad Church party. 
They protest, and I doubt not with perfect sincerity, 
that they throw aside all considerations except the 
simple desire of discovering the truth. And yet their 
investigations always end in opinions which are at 
least capable of expression in the words of the most 
antiquated formulae. It is as if a man should say that 
he always steered due north and yet his course should 
invariably take him safely through all the shoals and 
tortuosities of the Thames and land him conveniently 
at Lambeth stairs. I should think that there must be 
something very odd about his compasses. We talk of 
the dishonesty of the men who sidle up to the Roman 
Catholic Church in spite of every obstacle raised by 
rubrics and Privy Council decisions. The true differ- 
ence between them and the Broad Church seems to 
be that one set of thinkers base their whole system on 
some single but gigantic fiction, whilst the others 
prefer to mix truth and fiction in each article sepa- 
rately. Of conscious dishonesty, which means lying 
to others, there is probably little enough in either 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 19 

case; but towards lying to onesself, which is a bad 
thing in its way, there is abundant temptation in both 
cases. 

Such reflections torment the students of the writing's 
of the late most amiable and excellent Mr. Maurice. 
No one could listen to him or come within the ran^e of 
his personal influence without being profoundly at- 
tracted by the beauty of his character. The lads who 
had the advantage of hearing his teaching before the 
authorities of King's College discovered that he did not 
believe that hell was as hot and as durable as could be 
wished, generally went through a curious intellectual 
stage in after life. Some, indeed, have never emerged 
from it. To others it represents a mere transitory 
phase of thought upon which they look back with 
a half-pathetic and half-humorous interest. They re- 
member how eagerly they followed this teacher, whose 
moving tones, tremulous with suppressed earnestness, 
seemed to promise a new revelation. Could they but 
learn the secret which he appeared to have discovered, 
they would be able to reconcile faith and science, to 
extract the true ennobling essence from all the creeds, 
to make scientific formulas glow with divine light, and to 
find refreshment for their souls in barren theological 
dogmas. They racked their brains over the written 
words of the teacher, and turned for help to his ever 
eloquent and impassioned speech. And yet, labour as 
they would, the secret always seemed to evade them. 
The master could force all theories into his service with 

c 2 



20 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

surpassing ingenuity which they were loath to recognise 
as of the merely verbal order ; and yet when they tried 
to repeat the performance for themselves, the rigid 
formulae refused to blend and dissolve and reunite, as in 
the hands of the true magician. It was easy, indeed, 
to learn a few catchwords, which, if you did not look 
into them too closely, seemed to solve every doubt. But 
grasp a definite proposition ; pin it down by rigid logi- 
cal tests ; and it either resolved itself into mere empty 
verbiage, or had an uncomfortable tendency to become 
inconsistent and self-contradictory. Every statement 
seemed to be at once negative and affirmative ; and 
you were never sure that, by some strange chemical 
process, the doctrine from which you started would not 
be transmuted into what you had supposed to be its 
direct contradictory. Reluctantly enough you slowly 
came to the conclusion that you were wandering in 
cioudland, and beguiled by mere mirages and shifting 
phantasmagoria, which transformed themselves ou a 
nearer approach. Everlasting damnation of unbelievers 
was proved tobea most edifying and consolatory doctrine 
— only that everlasting did riot mean everlasting, nor 
damnation damnation, but yet, somehow or other, that 
trifling qualification only made a belief in the truth 
conveyed by the phrase more unspeakably important. 
Bewildered and provoked, you gave up the effort, con- 
tent to return to common daylight from this misty 
region of enchantments ; retaining only the moral 
lesson that candour and toleration were excellent things, 






THE BROAD CHURCH. 21 

whilst refusing to admit that they implied acceptance 
of two contradictory theories at the same time. 

Mr. Maurice's writings are a melancholy instance of 
the way in which a fine intellect may run to waste in 
the fruitless endeavour to force new truth into the 
old mould. A new chaos, and not a new order is the 
result of such manipulation of the raw materials of 
faith. Another section, however, and now the most 
important section of the Broad Church party, adopts a 
different theory. They preach it with immense fervour, 
and seem to think it really edifying. 

By good fortune, it is said, the tests were originally 
so lax and they have since been so much strained and 
loosened that the articles and other formularies of the 
Church of England are compatible with the wildest 
divergence of sentiment. This statement, however^ 
requires a little examination. Every one will of course 
admit that a man is not bound legally or morally by 
the popular glosses which have been put upon the 
Articles.. He is not bound to hold, as some people ap- 
pear to hold, that every word of the authorised version 
is strictly true. An eminent bishop, for example, was 
lately reported to have said that, whilst every part of 
the Bible which concerned our spiritual welfare was 
strictly true, it was not made out that the same ac- 
curacy could be predicated of the historical records of 
unimportant circumstances. In other words, state- 
ments may possibly be false, whose truth or falsehood 
is not of the slightest importance to any human being ; 



22 FEJEETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

we must accept all about the delivery of the Law or the 
massacre of the Canaanites, and though we may dispute 
as to the name of Abraham's father, or doubt whether 
a day in the first chapter of Genesis means a day. So 
modified a degree of freethinking could shock nobody's 
faith ; and it is not inconsistent with the most impartial 
interpretation of the Articles. Sceptics of this mild 
variety have been fitly compared to men who make a 
great show of bold swimming in shallow water, with one 
foot firmly planted on the bottom. Between them and 
more daring venturers in the deep, such as Bishop 
Colenso or Mr. Yoysey, there is a wide interval. Our 
bishop might naturally feel not merely that he could con- 
scientiously sign the tests but that the formularies of 
the Church provided the most natural expression for his 
religious convictions. But I am now speaking of those 
members of the Broad Church who, feeling that their 
sentiments fit with a certain awkwardness into the 
phraseology officially provided for them, substantially 
argue that they are justified in using strained versions 
of ordinary language, because the law has sanctioned 
very wide methods of interpretation. As there are so 
many shades of opinion, it is impossible to speak in 
terms applicable to the whole party ; nor do I in fact 
argue that the same course would be appropriate for 
all. I will therefore take an extreme case which can 
be discussed without personal imputations on any one. 
Mr. Voysey exemplified the most advanced stage of 
opinion at which a man could possibly claim to remain 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 23 

within the Church. Fortunately,, one may be per- 
mitted to think, for himself that claim was not allowed. 
I may still quote from his very powerful defence, and 
with the less scruple, because, as he himself remarks, 
his desire to remain within the Church could not pos- 
sibly be imputed to interested motives. He could, he 
says, have c secured a far better worldly position by 
deserting the Church any time within the last five 
years.' He put himself most effectually out of the path 
to promotion ; and he wished to stay in order to assert 
a principle. That principle, so far as it can be called a 
principle, is merely a bolder assertion of the general 
Broad Church theory. 

Mr. Yoysey was accused of heretical teaching in 
regard to the doctrines of the Atonement, of Justifi- 
cation by Faith, of the Incarnation, and of the In- 
spiration of the Bible. He admitted, or rather pro- 
claimed, that he disputed the popular interpretation of 
all those doctrines. But he asserted that his view was 
within the liberty allowed by law to the clergy. Sup- 
posing these statements to be justified, let us see what 
his position would be. I will take one or two speci- 
mens of his general line of argument. The 2nd Ar- 
ticle, he says, tells us that ( the Son was crucified, dead 
and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a 
sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for all 
actual sins of men.' The 31st Article adds that ' the 
offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, 
propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the 



24 FREETIIINKING AND PLAINS PEAKING. 

whole world, both original and actual; and there is 
none other satisfaction for sin but that alone.' The 
assertion contained in these words, says Mr. Voysey, is 
a mystery. It is an assertion as to a matter upon 
which the human mind can form absolutely no concep- 
tion at all. It is as unmeaning as a statement made 
in an unknown tongue or a cypher. We know it to 
be true, but we are no more enlightened by it (to take 
an illustration from Toland, the deist) than if we knew 
by infallible authority that ' something called a BHctri 
had a being in nature, and were not told what a Blictri 
was.' The only way of contradicting this assertion 
would be the assertion that nothing called a Blictri had 
a being in nature. Similarly, unless we assert a nega- 
tive between the predicate and the subject in the pro- 
position put before us, we do not and cannot con- 
tradict the Article, Foolish men, however, have 
chosen to interpret this inconceivable assertion into 
certain very plain and very erroneous teaching. Mr. 
Voysey therefore declares, that it is blasphemous and 
false to say that ' the Father and the Son are to be 
regarded as two distinct beings driving a bargain, the 
nature of which bargain is that the Father, in con- 
sideration of the pain suffered by the Son, will abstain 
from torturing after death people whom he otherwise 
would have tortured.' Further, he utterly denies the 
absurd theory that Adam was i morally perfect, whereas 
he fell into sin at the very first temptation, as most of 
his posterity do now.' Moreover, it is an odious 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 25 

mixture of falsehood and absurdity to say that ' when 
he eat the apple, God the Father cursed the whole 
human race, and determined that they should all be 
perpetually tortured in hell-fire after death, and that 
either before, or at the time, or afterwards, he 
made a covenant with God the Son, that if God the 
Son would be crucified (which the contracting parties 
regarded as being equivalent to being cursed) God the 
Father would relieve all or some of the human race 
from the curse which he had set upon them, upon some 
condition as to their believing something or other of 
which most of them had never heard/ In the same 
way, he denies that view of the Incarnation which 
regards it as Deity coming from heaven and dwelling 
in an individual man for some years and then going 
away again ; and he would, of course, deal with equal 
freedom with other mysterious doctrines. 

Upon this, and more to the same purpose, there is 
an obvious observation. The doctrine which Mr. 
Voysey denounces is, I doubt not, as false and blas- 
phemous as he asserts. But if the fact that a doctrine 
deals with matters altogether above our apprehension 
is enough to save it from being blasphemous by de- 
priving it of all intelligible meaning, why are not plain 
statements denounced by Mr. Voysey just as meaning- 
less as the technical terms of the article ? If on the 
other hand, we can make intelligible propositions about 
these ineffable mysteries, why is not the Article as re- 
volting as the statements denounced by Mr. Yoysey ? 



26 FREETHINKING AND TLAIN SPEAKING. 

How can lie save the authors of the Article from the 
charge of being blasphemous without extending the 
same favourable construction to its popular inter- 
preters ? At any rate, how can Mr. Voysey use lan- 
guage under the excuse that it has no meaning when 
he asserts that it is so easy to invest it with a meaning, 
which he declares to be horribly blasphemous ? The 
whole may be meaningless because referring to ineffable 
mysteries ; but that which shocks ordinary minds is 
precisely the assumption implied in the Article that 
definite statements can be made about such mysteries. 

Mr. Voysey's language about the Bible is perhaps 
less startling ; but it raises a similar difficulty. He 
quotes from Mr. Fitzjames Stephen's defence of Dr. 
Rowland Williams a passage summing up the views 
taken by various eminent divines of the English 
Church. Tillotson, for example, said that no parts of 
the Bible need be taken to be inspired which might have 
been written without inspiration* Burnet and Paley 
say, that though we must agree with the apostles' 
conclusions, we need not agree with their premises. 
Paley said that it is dangerous to make Christianity 
answerable for the circumstantial accuracy of the Old 
Testament narratives. Bishop Marsh endorses the 
opinion of Michaelis that the Gospels of Luke and 
Mark were not inspired at all. Bishop Hampden says 
that there is much false moral philosophy in the Bible. 
Various other authorities are quoted, and it is said 
that we may put all this together, and consequently 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 27 

enjoy almost any amount of liberty. It was decided, 
as we have seen, that Mr. Wilson was justified in 
saying that there was a dark crust of human error and 
passion over parts of the Bible ; and that Dr. Williams 
might lawfully deny that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, 
Peter the Second Epistle of Peter, and Daniel the 
book of Daniel. Mr. Voysey apparently used the 
liberty thus conferred, by arguing that St. John did 
not write the gospel bearing his name, and that parts 
of it contained immoral doctrine. He had, he says, a 
legal right to make these assertions, and, holding the 
views he did, it became his moral duty to make use of 
that legal right. 

I have no wish to dispute Mr. Voysey 's conception 
of his moral duty. I only urge that an equally honest 
man might take a very different view of his moral 
duty. The ordinary view of the doctrine of the 
Atonement is in his opinion inexpressibly repulsive. 
The language of the Articles and of the Liturgy is 
generally used to confirm that view. Were it not for 
the supposed need of maintaining liberal sentiment 
within the Church, a plain man would naturally use 
language as remote as possible from that which has 
been applied to so degrading a purpose ; and scrupu- 
lously avoid even the appearance of treading in the old 
tracks. The policy recommended in the name of true 
liberalism is to use the old language in a different 
sense or to try to deprive it of all sense whatever. If 
we wished to dissipate the superstition about witch- 



28 FREETH1NKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

craft, we should naturally say that there were no such 
things as witches, and that a bargain with the devil 
was a simple impossibility. According to this plan, we 
should still talk about witches, but explain that witch- 
craft was merely a roundabout term for a special 
variety of disease, and that talk about the devil was 
necessarily a metaphorical use of language. Which 
course of conduct would be most likely to put down 
the superstition, and to convince those who believed in 
it of the sincerity of its opponents ? But for the sup~ 
posed necessity of leavening the clergy with some 
liberal spirit, there can be no doubt that men like Mr, 
Voysey would repudiate the whole doctrine of the 
Atonement, and be at least as willing to sign the con^ 
tradictory of the Article as the words to which they 
now subscribe. How far they benefit the Church may 
be a matter of discussion, but it seems probable that 
this covert mode of attack is quite as profitable to their 
antagonists as to themselves. 

Take again the doctrine about the Bible. Mr. 
Voysey would apparently say that the Gospel of 
St. John is not authentic ; that parts of it are immoral ; 
he would, I should imagine, declare that many parts 
of the Old Testament contain mere legend or even 
childish fables; he would say that the massacres of 
the Canaamtes approved by the Hebrew God, were 
hideous atrocities, which we should describe as they 
deserved if committed by Mahommedans or Mormons, 
but to which we have become familiarised by long 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 29 

association. All this and more than this might perhaps 
be said without any breach of faith, so far as the tests 
imposed upon the clergy are concerned. But then 
would any sensible man holding such opinions get up 
and read these fables and demoralising stories in church 
with a solemnity calculated to impress their sacred 
character upon the minds of his congregation ? Much 
of the Bible is, on this showing, no better than Livy, 
or Hume's History of England. Would it be an 
improving practice to read fragments of Hume and 
Livy in church to people already too much disposed « 
to receive them as infallible guides ? One of the 
superstitions against which we have specially to con- 
tend in England is the excessive idolatry of the Bible. 
Does it confirm or weaken that superstition when the 
clergyman reads a passage from the Old Testament 
with the solemn preface, ( God spake these words ' ? 
The law may say that these words do not imply 
what they seem to imply ; but the legal interpretation 
is not present to the minds of the hearers, and has no 
effect upon them. If the reader afterwards gets up 
in the pulpit and explains that he has merely been 
reading some very questionable legends, the hearers 
are far more likely to be confused than edified. 
The necessity of going through this mockery, as it 
must appear, to any one holding opinions resembling 
those of Mr. Yoysey, is a far greater strain upon the 
conscience than the necessity of signing any tests 
before men who are personally qualified to judge of 



30 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPUAKING. 

their true interpretation. Or with what satisfaction 
can such a man repeat the creeds as the expression of 
his devout belief? I say nothing of the poor old 
damnatory clauses of the Athanasian creed, through 
which perhaps a sufficient number of loopholes have 
been made by assiduous labourers of infinite skill in 
that branch of industry. Indeed one has a certain 
tenderness for them as relics of a time when men 
could express their convictions vigorously and think 
that strong convictions were valuable. But it is hard 
enough to repeat the clauses which define the doctrine 
of the Trinity ; when one's real meaning is, Here are 
a number of obscure statements about matters alto- 
gether above our understanding, which were thought 
to have some meaning by believers in an utterly 
exploded school of philosophy, which now remains like 
the rudimentary organs in animals as marks of extinct 
controversies, and which I do not repudiate because 
they have no particular significance whatever. This 
is bad enough, without adding that people who won't 
say as much will be damned. Or, again, it is not 
pleasant to repeat even the Apostles' creed by way of 
expressing the opinion that there is, on the whole, 
sufficient evidence to make me think it more probable 
than not that Christ was crucified under Pontius 
Pilate, and rose again on the third day. 

Most Broad Churchmen do not of course go so far 
as this. Some of them, as I have said, declare — and 
strange as it appears to me, I give them full credit for 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 31 

believing sincerely — that the formularies of the Church 
are the natural expression of their deepest convictions. 
But the opposite line of argument is more common and 
more intelligible. Mr. Voysey is simply the enfant 
terrible of the Broad Church party. He has cruelly 
stripped their doctrines of the convenient haze in which 
they were enveloped ; and set down in plain black and 
white the line of defence which is tacitly assumed in 
then- ordinary justifications. Nothing of course is 
more unpleasant than to see our own opinions expressed 
in these harsh, crude, tangible shapes, and made so 
distinct that they cannot be recognized. The Girondin 
has a natural antipathy to the Jacobin. Mr. Yoysey 
has committed the grievous fault of excessive frankness. 
He has shown his cards too plainly. But the doctrines 
which he assails disappear just as effectually under the 
milder treatment of the allies by whom he is repudiated. 
They tend to melt away under their hands. The 
Atonement is spiritualised till it becomes difficult to 
attach any definite meaning to it whatever. The 
authority of the Bible becomes more difficult to define 
and to distinguish from the authority of any other good 
book. Everlasting punishment is put out of the way 
by the aid of judicious metaphysical distinctions. The 
sharp edges of old-fashioned doctrine are rounded off 
till the whole outline of the creed is materially altered. 
Phrases that once seemed perfectly definite turn out to 
have no meaning, and to become mere surplusage. 
And the gap between the ordinary interpretation and 



32 FREETHINKING AND VLAIN SPEAKING. 

that which our new teachers put upon their tests imper- 
ceptibly widens, until in some places the directions of 
the old and new teaching seem to be diametrically 
opposite. A simple test might be applied in such cases. 
Let a man put out of his mind, as far as possible, all 
the old phrases with which he has become familiar, and 
simply express his thoughts in the clearest language he 
can find. If this new expression falls in naturally with 
the old, there is no more to be said. If there is a 
palpable difficulty in reconciling them, the problem 
occurs whether he shall use the old in a new sense, or 
simply abandon language perplexed with so many mis- 
leading associations ? The answer must be given by 
deciding which duty is just now the most important : 
to speak out with the utmost clearness, or to keep the 
Church of England together a little longer. 

I would not blame too seriously those who decide 
for the last* There is much to be said for the Church 
of England, and though I am as far as possible from 
being one of its devoted sons, I can understand the 
views of men who see in it a great instrument for the 
education of the nation, in whose cause it is worth 
making some sacrifice, even of clear expression of a 
man's convictions. But admitting that men may perhaps 
be morally justified in taking this view, I deny their 
right to complain of those who take the opposite view. 
The one duty which at the present moment seems to me 
to be of paramount importance, is the duty of perfect 
intellectual sincerity. We are specially bound not 




THE BROAD CHURCH. 83 

only to avoid deceiving others, but to avoid deceiving 
ourselves. The controversies which are now raging 
remind one of that legendary battle which was fought 
with so much vehemence that the ghosts of the dead 
rose and fought side by side with the living. We have 
to grapple, not merely with living faiths, but with 
all kinds of phantoms that go about bragging as loudly 
as if they had a genuine existence. It is like that 
( last dim weird battle of the West,' when 

Some had visions out of golden youth, 
And some beheld the faces of old ghosts 
Look in upon the battle, 

and when the combatants heard 

Shrieks 
After the Christ of those who, falling down, 
Looked up for heaven and only saw the mist. 

For men who wish to fight on both sides ; to win 
enough credit by slaying a dead lie to be justified in 
dealing tenderly with a living one ; to be earnest 
enough to complain of the devil's dark complexion and 
yet too candid to call him quite black; that mist is 
highly convenient. But we require fighting of a 
sterner kind. Before any satisfactory issue can be 
reached, we must clear the air of all that cloud of 
delusion which renders the real questions at issue vague 
and uncertain. Let us fight in the daylight, and there 
will be some prospect of winning decisive victories. 
Now I cannot conceive any doctrine more fatal to 
genuine veracity of mind than one which exalts into a 

D 



34 FREETIIINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

duty what seems to me the most dangerous habit of 
forcing our genuine convictions into the moulds of 
ancient thought. We are only too much inclined to 
do so in all cases, and to put off a spirit of enquiry 
by mere phrases, instead of sincere principles. The 
process is at once attractive and easy. It is much 
pleasanter to say that we believe in everlasting punish- 
ment, but that everlasting punishment means nothing 
that can shock the most humane mind, than to 
denounce the doctrine as untrue and immoral. The 
habit grows upon us till creeds grow to be mere 
screens under cover of which we may slink out of 
the orthodox intrenchments into the opposite camp. 
Possibly we may do something towards facilitating the 
admission of timid tendencies towards liberalism ; but 
by using the language of our opponents we lose the 
cue great advantage of appealing boldly and clearly to 
the sympathies of mankind. Undoubtedly a process 
such as I have described is in certain cases legitimate ; 
it is as well that human ingenuity cannot construct 
inflexible cast-iron creeds, and that faiths have been 
gradually softened, instead of being always directly 
assaulted. If it had not been for such a process, 
toleration could never have been introduced, because 
the contrasts of opinion would have been too sharply 
defined. But then the process ceases to be legitimate 
as soon as it is consciously adopted as a principle of 
action. It is well when bigots gradually relax their 
claims from a dumb instinct that they must be modified; 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 35 

but I dispute the wisdom of a deliberate imitation of 
this natural process by men whose special claim to 
honour is their love of truth at all hazards. 

But why complain of honourable and excellent men 
who are doing their best according to the lights they 
possess ? Why, the infidel will ask, should we quarrel 
with the men who are unconsciously co-operating 
within the walls with the attack from without ? Pray 
leave them burrowing and undermining and sapping 
the old foundations. Do not interfere with their 
operations by cruelly unmasking their real tendency. 
The appeal thus made, as the orthodox Christian will 
urge, is insidious. You are inviting men to come into 
the outer court of the sanctuary in the hope that they 
will leave it altogether ; to take one step down hill in 
the full belief that once launched on the fatal slope 
they will descend it with accelerated rapidity. From 
your point of view the policy of such advice is obvious ; 
but the fact that you approve it should be a reason to 
him for suspecting it — in both of which arguments 
there is undoubtedly some truth. If it were one's 
ultimate object to destroy the Church of England, one 
would not much object to the methods pursued by the 
Broad Church party. One might wrap onesself in 
Machiavelian complacency, and smile at the spectacle 
of contending sections, each accusing the other with 
equal plausibility of insincerity or stupidity, and agree- 
ing only in provoking the contempt of outsiders. 
Take your own road to ruin, one might say ; internal 

d 2 



36 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

dissensions will do as well as open secession ; and we 
will not help to smother any incipient rationalism by 
insisting upon its legitimate consequences. It is true 
also that the advice may fairly be regarded with sus- 
picion by those to whom it is addressed, so far as the 
value of an argument depends upon the source from 
which it proceeds. And yet I think that there is a 
sufficient reason for speaking plainly in this matter ; 
not only because I believe the criticisms just made to 
be well founded, but because they seem to require 
emphatic assertion. It is not desirable that we should 
look on as indifferent spectators, even if we are con- 
vinced that the Churches are hopelessly doomed. We 
all have a very deep interest in the method of the 
transformation as well as in its result ; for the value of 
sincerity of fair discussion is independent of the par- 
ticular service in which they may be employed. 

The reason, in fact, for plain speaking, is precisely 
that the leaders of the Broad Church party are in the 
main honest and able men, and one grudges the waste 
of honesty and ability in these fruitless efforts to 
reconcile the irreconcilable. If we had lived a cen- 
tury or two ago, criticism of this kind would have been 
out of place. The liberal theologians of the past days 
of the Church of England undoubtedly rendered great 
services to freedom of thought by adopting a course 
at first sight identical. In those days, the alliance of 
reason and theology was spontaneous and concealed no 
hidden misgivings. Men like Chillingworth, or Barrow, 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 37 

or Tillotson, or even Butler, intricate and cramped as 
was his reasoning, spoke out like men ; they had nothing 
to conceal and no lurking doubts hidden away in dark 
corners of their minds. The deist might argue that 
they were mistaken; he might argue, as in fact he 
frequently did, that the logical inference from their 
principles was favourable to his own views, but he 
had no ground for imputing to them anything like in- 
sincerity. In a later generation we first find ourselves 
listening to hired advocates rather than to searchers 
for truth at any price, and the artificial character of 
the creed begins to make itself felt. Paley, of whom 
it is now the fashion to speak with contempt, partly 
caused by his utter inability to be obscure, was 
amongst the first writers who systematically en- 
deavoured to lower the meaning of subscription. 
Papists, Anabaptists, and Puritans — meaning by the 
last name persons who are hostile to the principle of 
an Established Church — ought not to subscribe the 
Articles, but almost anybody else may do so by virtue 
of the magical formula about converting c articles of 
faith ' into f articles of peace.' Broad Churchmen are 
specially given to sneering at poor Paley's mechanical 
religion, and his confusion of morality with expedi- 
ency ; but they have adopted and elevated into a great 
principle this which is amongst the most questionable of 
his theories. Now it is the open avowal of such a 
doctrine, and the habitual application of it as a basis of 
reasoning and a justification of action, that gives even 



38 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

opponents a right to complain. So long as a Christian 
is preaching pure rationalism, but preaching it quite 
unconsciously, we may accept his alliance without 
discredit on either side. But when he becomes 
conscious of the divergence between his words and 
their plain meaning, and justifies his practice, we have 
a right to insist on a distinct answer to some obvious 
questions. What are the limits of the liberty which 
he claims ? Does he disapprove of Mr. Voysey's mode 
of straining words? If so, where does he draw the 
line? If not, what is the amount of equivocation 
which he will permit ? Is it possible to be dishonest 
in the use of religious language ? It is absolutely 
necessary, he says, to allow the mixture of some alloy 
in the coins which pass for sound bullion. How much 
may be admitted ? May the coins be made altogether 
of alloy ? and, if so, what is the difference between a 
forger and an honest man ? Can it really be maintained 
that the essential thing is to use the proper stamp and 
not to deal in the genuine article ? In short, if the 
duty of plainspeaking be admitted in some senses,. 
where are the limitations which you would set to it ? 

Such reflections may be commended to the able and 
honest men — I do not mean to indulge in any irony 
after the model of Anthony's — who have so many 
claims to our respect, for they may be well assured 
that upon their giving a distinct answer to them 
depends their power of exercising a healthy influence. 
Freedom of enquiry is a very different thing from 



THE BROAD CHURCH. 39 

freedom of speech, if by the latter phrase be meant 
the liberty of using any words in any sense ; and it 
is an unpleasant phenomenon when we see both kinds 
of freedom claimed with the same earnestness by some 
of the best men of our time. Meanwhile the outside 
world has pretty well made up its mind. The services 
rendered to the cause of freethinking by the Broad 
Church party are undeniable ; but the services rendered 
are beginning to be eclipsed by the disservice in pro- 
portion as the effort with which they obey two masters 
becomes palpable and recognised. The care with which 
the blinkers have to be adjusted is so great that one 
can hardly believe the operation to be performed by a 
blind instinct. Not many years ago, young men were 
chiefly struck by the candour and freedom of thought of 
the new school of preachers. Now I suspect that the 
impression produced is very different. It is painful 
and humiliating to witness the effort with which these 
gentlemen maintain their perilous attitude of unstable 
equilibrium. It is melancholy to see so much genuine 
fervour running to waste, not in preaching the truths 
which are most urgently needed, but in trying to make 
fiction do the work of truth. A man who would do 
good work in this world must throw aside every weight 
and free himself from all unnecessary fetters. These 
teachers voluntarily encumber themselves with needless 
burdens and waste infinite ingenuity in trying to move 
just as though they were free. In proportion as one 
feels the necessity of forcible preaching of great truths 



40 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

in this distracted state of things, one is vexed and dis- 
gusted by the thought that those who share that sense 
and who have the greatest capacity for influencing 
men's minds, waste their power in an attempt to square 
circles. Our natural guides stray from the straight- 
forward path in pursuit of a mere ignis fatuus. There 
is always cowardice, and hypocrisy, and shuffling 
enough in the world ready to take advantage of any 
decent excuse provided by misguided skill. There is 
even more disposition to take refuge in the really 
immoral form of scepticism, that, namely, which 
assumes that as truth is unattainable it can do no 
harm to tell lies. Both these tendencies are encou- 
raged by the piteous sacrifice of intellect and candour 
involved in the hopeless attempt to cling to the Thirty- 
nine Articles. It is about time that such attempts 
should cease, for the practical tendency of Broad 
Church teaching is not, as formerly, to convince young 
men that it is possible to be at once rational and 
christian, but to convince them that it is possible to 
be at once rational and clergymen, which is a very 
different thing. 



RELIGION AS A FINE A.RT. 41 



CHAPTER II. 

RELIGION AS A FINE ART. 

c In the first of Queen Elizabeth/ says Fuller, c Scrip- 
ture-plays were acted even in the church itself; which, 
in my opinion, the more pious the more profane, stoop- 
ing faith to fancy and abusing the majesty of God's 
word. Such pageants might inform, not edify, though 
indulged the weakness of that age. For, though 
children may be played into learning, all must be 
wrought into religion, by ordinances of divine institu- 
tion, and the means ought to be as serious as the end 
is sacred.' We have become wiser since the days of the 
quaint historian. The Ammergau play has been the 
means of our conversion. The representation of the 
death of the Saviour of mankind has been performed to 
a series of crowded and enthusiastic audiences ; it has 
had a run sufficient to rouse the envy of the managers of 
London or Paris. The simple-minded peasantry, who, 
twenty years ago, had it all to themselves and, ten 
years ago, received a mere sprinkling of curious ob- 
servers from the outside world, have, during the last 
two seasons, been elbowed by Englishmen following 
each other with true tourist docility. Ten years hence, 



42 FREETIIINKING AND PLAIN &TE AXING. 

Ammergau will hardly be able to contain its visitors, 
unless some enterprising speculator runs up a monster 
hotel ; and what is to come of the succeeding repre- 
sentations if curiosity increases at its present ratio is 
difficult even to be imagined. The literature which 
has sprung up upon the subject may possibly justify 
one who has not been present in fancying that he can 
form some vague picture of the general features of the 
scene ; though it is true that every description begins 
by saying that nothing but ocular inspection can convey 
even an inadequate idea of its wonders. Yet, if we 
disavow the least intention of criticising the perform- 
ance itself, perhaps something may be said, without 
offence, of the effect invariably produced upon the 
minds of the spectators. One cannot but wonder, for 
example at the complete absence from their narratives 
of any trace of such sentiments as I have quoted 
from Fuller. The suspicion that there might perhaps 
be something irreverent in a performance so alien to 
our modern ideas is noticed only to be emphatically 
repudiated. A man who should avow himself to 
be ever so little shocked by the representation of 
the crucifixion upon the stage would be hooted out 
of court as a Philistine of the deepest dye. One uni- 
versal chorus of unmixed admiration has been raised 
from all sides. Every superlative in the language has 
been heaped upon the play and the actors. The distri- 
bution of praise has indeed been so lavish that perhaps 
some of us have been conscious of a certain feeble re- 






RELIGION AS A FINE ART, 4& 

calcitration and a faint wish, half-formed and most 
carefully guarded from utterance, that some one might 
have the courage to express a shade of dissent. But 
the only muttering of disapproval that has reached our 
ears has been a remark, that the crowing of St. Peter's 
cock was not quite up to the mark, and that the colour- 
ing of some of the dresses was not quite perfect. Assert 
that Shakspeare was no poet, that Newton was a feeble 
mathematician, that Raphael was a poor painter, and 
Mozart a second-rate musician ; but, on penalty of a 
kind of aesthetic excommunication, you are forbidden 
to find fault with the mystery at Ammergau. And 
yet many of those whose enthusiasm was thus excited 
were men from whom any sparks of that kind are hard 
to elicit. Professed cynics and unbelievers, radical 
attorneys, unimaginative stockbrokers, and even Dis- 
senting ministers, have joined in the universal lauda- 
tion. From all which it may be safely inferred that, 
in its way, the Ammergau mystery must be singularly 
impressive and absolutely free from some of the failings 
which we should have been inclined to anticipate. 

But there is another inference with wdiich we are 
more concerned. These ardent admirers admit with 
one voice, that this most impressive spectacle is hope- 
lessly doomed. They agree that it is a relic of an 
earlier phase of thought, preserved along with an 
expiring form of society in the folds of the Alps, and 
that it would perish if transplanted to a different 
climate. They fear that even their admiration will 



44 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

be fatal. The influx of new admirers will sophisticate 
the native simplicity of the performers ; with a breath 
of the outside it will vanish as the old kings who melt 
into dust when some tumulus is broken open after the 
lapse of centuries. Indeed, one zealot has gone so 
far as to propose that means should be taken for 
excluding strangers from the country. He would 
condemn the villagers to permanent exile from the 
nineteenth century, in order that so beautiful a relic 
of mediae valism may not be destroyed. They should be 
protected by a Chinese seclusion for the benefit of our 
aesthetic perceptions. At first sight this is rather a 
bold proposal ; and yet, as we look closer, we perceive 
that its strangeness consists rather in its modesty than 
in its audacity. To condemn one little village in the 
Alps to permanent exile into the Middle Ages is a 
trifle when there is so general a desire to apply the same 
remedy to the whole world. The civilised races of 
Europe are suffering from a disease which, in clerical 
language, is generally put down as atheism : elsewhere 
it will have to be stamped out ; here it has fortunately 
not yet penetrated, and there may be a chance of 
keeping it at bay by a properly devised spiritual 
quarantine. Something, indeed, may be done by a 
judicious use of disinfectants and prophylactics, even 
in the districts where it is most rife. If no physical 
line of separation can be established, yet there are 
means known to science by which the contagion may 
be prevented from spreading. The little flock of true 



RELIGION AS A FINE ART. 45 

believers may mingle with a sceptical world and yet may 
preserve here and there small cities of refuge, where 
no doubt may be whispered, and mutual sympathy 
may stimulate their powers of faith. But as it is 
impossible for anyone living in such places as London 
and Paris not occasionally to rub shoulders with the 
wicked, as we cannot all retire into cloisters and place 
ourselves behind locks and bars, there is need of a 
more portable form of protection. Each genuine 
believer is therefore encouraged to erect an impassable 
barrier — not between himself and the infidel world 
— but across his own mind. Let him divide his thoughts 
from each other, so that no contagion can pass from 
one sphere to the other. His intellect will resemble one 
of those ships which are built in water-tight compart- 
ments. Even if the deluge of infidelity pours into one 
part of his mind, he will be scarcely less buoyant and 
secure of rising above the surges. Or perhaps it may 
be said with more propriety, that such a person resem- 
bles the cataleptic patients who lead two separate 
existences — one in dreamland, and one in the ordinary 
world of human beings. In one life he will deal with 
facts, with science, and Darwinism, and blue books, 
and political economy ; in the other he wanders through 
a beautiful but shadowy region, where romance takes 
the place of history, and poetry of reasoning. He will 
retire into a remote chamber of his brain, and there 
repose untroubled by any contact with hard realities, 
as Crusoe, when he had drawn up his ladders, felt 



46 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

secure from the cannibals. He will care no more for 
historical criticism as applied to the Grospels than he 
would care for testing the geographical accuracy of 
Dante's descriptions of heaven and hell. As Prior 
complained of being forced to swear to the truth of a 
song, he will think it ridiculous to be invited to sub- 
scribe to the truth of a creed. Cavillings, like those 
of poor Bishop Colenso, will be triumphantly answered 
by the remark that the application of a similar mode 
of arguing would show that Brobdingnag and Lilliput 
never existed. In short, Religion will become one of 
the fine arts, and have no more root in the world of fact. 
The two modes of thought will belong to different 
spheres, which can by no possibility be brought into 
collision. 

That some such system is, in fact, very prevalent 
may be inferred with some probability from the general 
admiration of the Ammergau play. Why, in fact, 
should anybody be shocked by the representation of 
the most touching story that has ever appealed to 
human sympathy ? The old Puritans, who swept 
away so much that was beautiful, had a prosaic way of 
adhering to the letter, and were not refined -enough 
to understand the difference between a symbol and a 
downright assertion. When they were told that the 
Second Person of the Trinity was incarnate in human 
flesh, they actually supposed that they were listening 
to a statement of fact. Though the full meaning; of 
the words transcended all human intelligence, they 



RELIGION AS A FINE ART. 47 

nevertheless believed that, without any figurative 
interpretation, Jesus Christ was really divine as well 
as human. Consequently it shocked them as one 
would expect it to shock anyone who shared their 
belief, to see a good-looking peasant part his hair in 
the middle and declare himself to be the representative 
of his Saviour. They would have thought the per- 
formance as profane as we should still think it profane 
(so at least one may venture to assume for the present), 
if a venerable old man with a full beard enacted the part 
of God the Father. Such a scene as the crucifixion had 
a significance too awful to become an object of artistic 
treatment. Heaven and hell were realities, and the 
means by which the Divine wrath was turned from 
sinners could only be contemplated in moods of the 
most solemn adoration. Something of this kind would 
be the old Protestant feelino*. We have changed all 
that. We can recognise the beauty of the Christian 
legend without troubling ourselves about its historic 
truth. The idealisation of suffering is equally pathetic 
whether embodied in a myth or in an authentic nar- 
rative. Phrases about the divinity of Christ are 
superlatives to which it is unnecessary or impossible to 
attach any definite meaning. To talk about heaven 
and hell and redemption is merely a picturesque way 
of expressing abhorrence for gross and disgusting 
habits. Worship is merely an agreeable mode of 
stimulating certain emotions without implying any 
particular theory as to the objects of worship; and 



48 FREETHINKING AND FLAIN SPEAKING. 

one method of treatment may be as effective as another. 
Nor, of course, is there any trace of irreverence in the 
performers themselves. The position which Christ 
occupies in their ordinary beliefs is in harmony with 
this mode of celebrating his history. He is the 
central figure in their Pantheon ; the head of the 
saintly hierarchy; and except so far as he is superseded 
by his mother, the most useful patron at the court of 
heaven. In those innocent valleys the uncomfortable 
Protestant habit of demanding statements of fact has 
never perverted the natural developments of a popular 
mythology. They have never plunged into theological 
disputation after the fashion of the Scotch peasantry. 
There has been no discontinuity in their intellectual 
progress. One legend has grown up after another, as 
quietly as successive generations of pines have risen 
on the sides of their mountains. There has been no 
great dislocation of ideas, since their primitive paganism 
faded out before Christianity ; and perhaps even then 
the old beliefs were as much transformed as superseded. 
Amongst such simple-minded people the figure of Christ 
takes its place naturally in a cycle of legends, whose 
truth or falsehood is simply an irrelevant question. 
His attributes are not for them defined by a dogmatic 
theology of which they know nothing, and the very 
existence of scepticism or critical enquiry is unsus- 
pected. The popular imagination naturally rejects 
the divine in favour of the human elements, and Christ 
becomes a figure of singular beauty, admirably adapted 



RELIGION AS A FINE ART. 49 

to be the subject of a dramatic representation. It is 
only when you insist upon identifying the hero of the 
popular imagination with the person whose attributes 
are defined in creeds,, that there is any risk of the dis- 
cord due to profanity. Forget all about the Thirty- 
nine Articles, the Trinitarian controversies, and 
dogmatic theology, and you need be no more shocked 
at bringing upon the stage the death of Christ than 
the death of Ali. 

The frame of mind of those innocent peasants has an 
immense attraction for imaginative persons at the pre- 
sent day. They watch with infinite pain the decay of 
the old symbols, so intimately associated with the 
deepest emotions and loftiest aspirations of the poet. 
The world looks bleak and miserable as the temples 
fall into ruin, and the idols are broken down. The 
contest between science and the old theology becomes 
daily more implacable : it is in vain that the opponents 
on both sides, declare in the most emphatic language, 
that there is not, and cannot be, any fundamental 
opposition between the voice of God as revealed in 
the Scriptures and as revealed in the book of Nature. 
The proposition is undeniable, but unfortunately 
quite irrelevant to the question whether the Scriptures 
are, in fact, the voice of God. Equally idle is the 
other commonplace, that the Bible was intended to 
teach us science. If the Bible states that something 
is a fact which is not a fact, it makes no difference to 
call it a e scientific fact.' It can hardly be seriously 

E 



50 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

urged, that an inspired book is at liberty to make 
erroneous statements on all matters which may become 
the subjects of accurate investigation — the only sense 
which can be made of the words. A reconciliation is 
required, founded on some deeper principle. The sacred 
images must be once and for all carried fairly beyond 
the reach of the spreading conflagration, not moved 
back step by step, suffering fresh shocks at every 
fresh operation. The radical remedy would be to con- 
vey them at once into the unassailable ground of the 
imagination. Admit that the Bible has nothing to do 
with facts of any kind, that theology and science have 
no common basis, because one deals with poetry and 
the other with prose. The sceptic's standing ground 
will be cut away from beneath his feet. He may tear 
to pieces any number of Scriptural statements, only to 
find that he has been venting his rage on an empty 
garment from which the living essence has withdrawn 
itself uninjured. Voltaire or Strauss may be allowed 
to do their worst with entire complacency. Whether 
there was or was not a Garden of Eden, or a Flood, or 
a Tower of Babel ; whether the Jews ever walked dry- 
shod through the Bed Sea ; whether a priest could eat 
thirty-three pigeons in a minute ; nay — to leave such 
trifles — whether there ever was upon this earth a living 
and moving human being called Jesus of Nazareth, 
would be matters of the most profound indifference. 

In fact, we see that from the most opposite parties 
there is a curious convergence towards conclusions of 






RELIGION AS A FINE ART. 51 

this kind. Those who believe that a supernatural 
guide is to be found, capable of deciding all religious 
controversies, have been hardly pressed to maintain 
their position. As our view of history widens, it 
becomes gradually more impossible for the imagination, 
to say nothing of the reason, to believe that any Pope 
or council has a monopoly of truth. The a priori 
demonstrations of the necessity of such a guide break 
down in face of the palpable fact that no such guidance 
has been vouchsafed to the overwhelming majority of 
the human race ; and the more men examine the pre- 
tensions of the only body on whose behalf such claims 
are put forward, the more difficult it becomes to believe 
in the infallibility of its varying and contradictory 
oracles. The marks of its human origin are too plain, 
and its historical development too distinctly before us. 
But admit that the Pope is not, in the plain sense of 
words, a judge of controversies, but a master of the 
ceremonies, and the difficulty disappears. If one doc- 
trine is as good as another, so far as its relation to 
facts is concerned, or, in other words, if it has no relation 
to facts at all, there are manifold advantages in accept- 
ing an authority which may secure unity of rites and 
discipline. Legislation, palpably out of place in the 
sphere of reason, may perhaps be admitted in matters 
of imagination. We may accept that particular set of 
idols which an intelligent priesthood thinks likely to 
be the most useful, if they do not ask us to belie>e 
that they represent realities. 

E 2 



52 FREETHINKING AND PL AIN8PE AXING. 

The doctrine by which such a system may be sup- 
ported has been already partly elaborated. Our 
assents, we are told, are not to follow our reason, 
but to outrun it by some indefinite quantity. We are 
to believe dogmas, not because their truth can be 
established by the ordinary processes of observation 
and induction, but partly also because they give a 
certain satisfaction to our emotions. So long as reason 
is admitted to have any part in the matter, it is to be 
feared that its corroding influence will still make itself 
felt ; it will be always eating away the base upon 
which these beautiful superstructures have been reared, 
and slowly but inevitably they will crumble into dust. 
The only satisfactory result will be reached when 
reasoning of this kind is pushed to its logical extreme. 
The division between faith and reason is a half-measure, 
till it is frankly admitted that faith has to do with fic- 
tion, and reason with fact. Then the two spheres of 
thought may be divided by so profound a gulf /that 
each of the rival methods may be allowed its full scope 
without interfering with the other. There will be, 
for example, an ecclesiastical and a secular solar sys- 
tem ; the earth may in one system revolve round the 
sun, and in the other the sun may revolve round the 
earth, without the smallest possibility of a collision. 
The only meaning of accepting a doctrine on authority 
to the exclusion of reason, when the words are fearlessly 
examined, is accepting it whether it is true or not. The 
Virgin Mother is a lovely symbol in the region of true 



RELIGION AS A FINE ART. 53 

poetry ; but once admit that historical criticism is to be 
permitted to enquire into the truth of the legends about 
her life or into the competency of the authority on which 
they are to be accepted, and no one can answer for the 
results. Sooner or later that i inexorable logic/ of which 
we sometimes hear, must either commit suicide by ad- 
mitting the extreme sceptical conclusion that all reason 
is fallacious, or must regard religious truth as merely a 
variety of what is known as artistic truth. Doctrines 
must be subjected to the test of their imaginative har- 
mony, instead of the scrutiny of the verifying faculty. 
The tendency is equally marked, though it pro- 
duces a different set of results, amongst the opposite 
religious party. The more we study the writings of 
the liberal school of theologians, the more we are struck 
by the constant recurrence of certain difficulties. They 
are perpetually troubled by the rigid dogmas, and the 
still more rigid facts, which they are compelled to work 
into their system. They labour with almost pathetic 
earnestness to soften the harsh outlines of the old- 
fashioned doctrine, and to put new wine into the old 
bottles. The dogmas undergo a change like that of a 
fossil shell, where the form remains, but the whole 
substance has been gradually exchanged. And yet, 
manipulate language as you will, you cannot quite get 
rid of its early associations. The doctrine of the sac- 
raments has an insuperable tendency to sacerdotal 
magic. Hell may be proved to be the most unobjec- 
tionable place conceivable, and yet it has a certain sul- 



54 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

phurous flavour about it. The Athanasian Creed, after 
all has been said that can be said, is still an incon- 
venient form of words for expressing hatred of sec- 
tarian dogmatism. The necessity of retaining some 
sort of historical basis for belief is equally irritating. 
The essential doctrine of the school is that a divine 
element is to be found in every creed ; and that religion 
can neither stand nor fall by the result of a critical 
enquiry into facts. Every possible contempt is thrown 
upon poor Paley and his like, who fancied that they 
could try the truth of Christianity as one would try an 
issue of fact before a jury. The miracles upon which 
our simple ancestors laid so much stress are admitted 
to be rather a scandal than a source of edification. 
Faith is declared to rest on an incomparably wider and 
firmer basis. The doctrine may be true, and is cer- 
tainly attractive in many ways. And yet, after it has 
been announced in the broadest and boldest manner, 
we somehow find the old evidences coming back. After 
declaring that dogmatic formulas and historical state- 
ments are mere empty shells, of no significance to the 
spirit of man, we discover that, in some sense or other, 
the knowledge of a certain set of events which happened 
in Palestine eighteen hundred years ago is of vital im- 
portance to mankind. We are told, with abundant 
eloquence, that belief in Christ, and not the acceptance 
of certain dogmas about Christ, is that which is im- 
peratively required. And yet, when we try firmly to 
grasp this rather vague statement, we find that the 



RELIGION AS A FINE ART. 55 

most abstruse dogmas convey truths unspeakably re- 
freshing to the soul, and that belief in them is the salt 
of the earth. The logical conclusion to which these 
thinkers are tending would be, that the emotion, and 
not the opinion, is of vital consequence ; but frankly to 
accept that conclusion would be to part company with 
Christianity of the historical kind. Willing as they 
are to soar altogether above the groundwork of fact, 
they are still brought back to it by the fear of floating 
off into mere vague cloudland of Pantheism. The cord, 
so often strained, must snap at last. Christianity must 
be made independent of history, and the difficulty will 
disappear. The rigid framework will dissolve of itself, 
and religion become merely the embodiment in con- 
crete images of the spiritual aspirations of mankind. 
There is no longer a pretext for describing as dishonest 
the use of a dogma to express the precise contrary of 
what it once meant. Milton might appropriate a clas- 
sical myth, or Goethe a mediaeval legend, to express 
modern conceptions ; and we may take equal liberties 
with the picturesque imagery of the early Christians. 
We shall not be asked to believe that the Grospels are 
true, in the sense in which a newspaper report is true, 
but merely that they have an artistic truth as repre- 
senting a noble phase of human nature. The evidences 
and the dogmas may be finally dismissed to the limbo 
of Dryasdust. 

6 Whoever,' says Mr. Pattison, c would take the 
religious literature of the present day as a whole, and 



56 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

endeavour to make out clearly on what basis revelation 
is supposed by it to rest ; whether on authority, on the 
inward light or reason, on self-evidencing Scripture, or 
on the combination of the four, or some of them, or in 
what proportions — would probably find that he had 
undertaken a perplexing, but not altogether profitless 
enquiry.' But it seems doubtful whether this enume- 
ration exhausts all possibilities. None of the four 
bases, at least, seem to lead us to the purely modern 
conception, that of a religion raised on a purely aesthetic 
basis; accepted, not because it is true, but because 
it is beautiful. Certain old-fashioned prejudices may 
oppose its adoption, and yet it would seem that by 
this path alone we can arrive at that truly Catholic 
religion, so ardently desired by so many different sects. 
A dogma is only offensive when you are asked to 
believe it ; but we may be all members of a Church in 
which a dogma is no more essential than a vestment, 
and is simply an arbitrary sign of certain emotions. 
Indeed, by this method we may reach a Catholicism 
wider than has ever yet dawned upon the imagination 
of mankind. Why should we be debarred from any 
legend which, as Mr. Tennyson puts it, the supreme 
Caucasian mind has carved out of nature for itself? 
The Virgin Mother and the suffering God may be 
the most impressive of types ; but there is beauty 
also in the innumerable creeds embodied in the old 
Pagan worship. Why should not the gods come back 
from the exile so pathetically described by Heine ? 



RELIGION AS A FINE ART. 57 

They cannot quite take their old place, and must 
doubtless condescend more or less to put on the livery 
of the Galilean ; but if provided with proper costumes 
by cultivated artists, and approved by a judicious 
priesthood, they might once more see the old celebrations 
revived, and the feasts of at least the more respectable 
deities celebrated with an imitation of the old fervour. 
Christianity was rather too hard upon the old super- 
stitions, even whilst pressing many of them into its 
service. Why should religion be deprived for ever of 
the element which the Greek sense of beauty contri- 
buted to art and poetry ? Why should our devotions 
be attenuated with the meagre and repulsive forms due 
to the medieval imagination ? Let us have a judicious 
eclecticism, such as is already provided in art, where 
classical and mediaeval revivalisms appear to subsist in 
friendly rivalry. The public mind is already prepared 
for the change. The popular commonplace is, that all 
religions come to the same thing, though dissevered by 
a few external excrescences. The spirit is one, though 
its manifestations are many. A new Eirenikon may 
be proposed with more hope of acceptance, when theo- 
logians have once recognised the truth already perceived 
by the multitude, that one set of dogmas is pretty 
much as good as another. 

The great change which has taken place in apologetic 
literature may be perhaps expressed thus. It is no 
longer argued that the orthodox solution is the only 
credible solution, but that it is a credible solution. 



58 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

It is not said, if you examine the whole history, 
follow science to its legitimate conclusions, and 
grapple boldly with metaphysical difficulties, you 
will find yourself inevitably driven to accept the 
orthodox creed ; but it is urged, more modestly if not 
more conclusively, that, whatever difficulties may be 
raised, they are not so great as to make belief in that 
creed impossible. Nobody says that the position of 
the man of science is untenable if you choose to accept 
his point of view ; but it is argued, that if you train 
yourself properly, and look at matters judiciously, you 
may still work yourself up to accept the other position. 
The argument from evidence is superseded by the 
argument from morality or the argument from taste. 
The old religion is so beautiful and so convenient, that 
it is a pity to give it up, until it is untenable to the 
imagination as well as to the reason. Whether you 
evade the conflict between science and theology, by 
saying that the ancient dogmas are to be accepted 
without any reference to reason, or to be accepted 
because they may be twisted into any meaning what- 
ever, or to be accepted simply because you can get up 
a sham-belief in them if you try very hard, you are 
equally approximating to the same principle that they 
belong to the sphere of poetry instead of history. This 
view once boldly accepted, controversies may disappear 
as simply inapplicable, and we are on the road to the 
eclectic faith, combining all that is lovely in the creeds 
of all persuasions. 



RELIGION AS A FINE ART. 59 

And yet, attractive as the vision may be, there is 
still a difficulty or two in the way of its realisation. 
The old Puritan leaven is working still in various 
forms, in spite of the ridicule of artistic minds and the 
contempt of philosophers. A religion to be of any 
value must retain a grasp upon the great mass of man- 
kind, and the mass are hopelessly vulgar and prosaic. 
The ordinary Briton persists in thinking that the 
words c I believe ' are to be interpreted in the same 
sense in a creed or a scientific statement. His appetite 
wants something more than 'theosophic moonshine.' 
He expects that messages from that undiscovered 
country, whence no traveller returns, should be as 
authentic as those which Columbus brought from 
America. He wants to draw aside the mystery by 
which our little lives are bounded, and to know 
whether there is, in fact, a beyond and a hereafter. 
He fancies that it is a matter of practical importance 
to know whether there is a heaven where he will be 
eternally rewarded, or a hell where he will be eternally 
tortured. He does not see that it really makes no 
difference whether those places have an objective 
existence or are merely the projections upon the 
external w T orld of certain inward emotions. He is so 
inquisitive that he insists upon knowing whether the 
word God is to be applied to a being who will interfere, 
more or less, with his life, or is merely a philosophical 
circumlocution for the unvarying order of nature. 
One fiction may do as well as another in poetry, and 



60 



FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAK1NG. 



may be taken up or laid down as the artist pleases _ 
but lie supposes that his readiness to pick pockets or 
cut throats will, more or less, depend upon whether he 
believes that God or humanity is the centre of the 
universe ; that priests are licensed manufacturers of 
myths, or ambassadors revealing supernatural secrets ; 
that the approval of men or the prospect of future 
reward is to be the mainspring of his conduct here. 
He imagines, in short, that, though certain common- 
places are common to all systems of morality, his 
character and the general tendency of his actions will 
be profoundly influenced by the view of his position on 
earth placed before him by his instructors. Protes- 
tants, and Papists, and Positivists, all condemn murder 
and praise benevolence in general terms, but there 
are, or so he fancies, profound differences in the type 
of morality which results from absorbing the influences 
of those rival systems. Of course, he is shortsighted 
and stupid. The differences of doctrine are super- 
ficial, and will die away of themselves. The one 
objectionable thing is to believe anything very strongly; 
that is bigoted, and makes a man painfully narrow- 
minded. Look at all religions from the serene heights 
of philosophy, and you must admit that all are beautiful 
in their way, and may be turned to account by the 
genuine liberal. Dr. Newman expounds a very 
beautiful and touching creed, so does Comte, and 
possibly even Mr. Bradlaugh. Let us agree to differ. 
Those who find it pleasant to their imaginations may 



RELIGION AS A FINE ART. 61 

dwell upon St. Paul's aspirations for immortality, and 
others may prefer, in the words of a modern poet, 

To thank with brief thanksgiving 

Whatever G-ods may be 
That no life lives for ever, 
That dead men rise up never, 
That even the weariest river 

Winds somewhere safe to sea ! 

There are times at which one conception is most 
appropriate, and times at which we may prefer the 
other. Why go on struggling, and arguing, and 
forcing our neighbours to share our opinions ? It is as 
unphilosophical as to insist upon everybody preferring 
Gothic or Greek architecture* instead of taking the 
modern ground of judicious eclecticism, and loving all 
styles of art, all types of morality, and all systems of 
religion. The opposite line of conduct is worthy only 
of the petty tradesman who carries calculations of 
profit and loss to an inappropriate sphere, and asks for 
motives as tangible as pounds, shillings, and pence, 
when he ought to be content with lovely poetical 
reasons. 

And yet, even when our prosaic friends are 
thoroughly suppressed, and made properly ashamed 
of themselves, we are not quite at the end of the 
question. Let us give up the question of fact, and 
admit that the demand for truth in a creed is utterly 
unreasonable, so far as its influence upon our lives is 
concerned. Still there remains an aesthetic perplexity. 
Can even an art — if religion is to be definitely an art — 



62 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

be noble and genuine when entirely divorced from 
reality? That desired separation between the two 
lobes of the brain is not so easily managed as might be 
wished. A sort of chemical reaction is set up in spite 
of all walls of division. You cannot combine the 
mythology which is the spontaneous growth of one 
stage of intellectual development, with the scientific 
knowledge characteristic of another. Even the poetical 
imagination requires some stronger sustenance than 
can be derived from mere arbitrary fancies or the 
relics of exploded traditions. The gods of the Pagan 
pantheon led a kind of posthumous existence in poetry 
long after they had died out of the living faith of the 
world ; but they suffered from a slow but inevitable 
decay, which made them too shadowy, by degrees, 
even for poetical use. Invocations of the Muse 
became very uninteresting when the Muse had become 
what, according to some philosophers, the Christian 
duty is in danger of becoming — a mere philosophical 
formula. The highest poetry must always express 
emotions excited by the deepest convictions of the 
time. A modern Dante, if such a person existed, 
could no longer compose a Divine Comedy, when 
placed in the chilling medium of modern scepticism. 
Descartes, says Pascal, tried to do without God, but 
was obliged to retain him in order to give a fillip to 
start the machinery of the universe. A God of this 
kind — a mere roi faineant, a constitutional king, 
secured from our sight by responsible ministers in the 



£ 



RELIGION AS A FINE ART. 63 

shape of second causes — will hardly stir the vehement 
passions which burst spontaneously into verse. The 
psalms sung in his honour would be as languid as 
the feelings he inspires. A God who is not allowed 
even to make a fly or launch a thunderbolt will be 
worshipped in strains widely different from those 
which celebrated the Ruler who clothed the horse's 
neck with thunder, and whose voice shook the wilder- 
ness. The prevalent conceptions of the day will 
somehow permeate its poetry — if it has any — in spite 
of all that can be done to keep them out. Shakspeare 
and Bacon were not independent phenomena, brought 
together by an accidental coincidence. They were 
rooted in the same soil, and the impulse, though it 
led to different manifestations, was ultimately derived 
from the same sources. 

This, of course, is a commonplace ; but we have a 
device in modern times for evading the apparent con- 
clusion. We are, it is said, pre-eminently an historical 
age ; our special function is the critical. We do not 
produce original thought, but live upon examining and 
dressing up the accumulated inheritance of our ances- 
tors. We want the simplicity and the freshness which 
was necessary to produce new forms of art or faith. 
Indeed, when we come across regions in which such 
forms still linger, we are apt to spoil them by our touch. 
The native dress of India disappears in favour of Man- 
chester prints, and perhaps native religions may be su- 
perseded in time by equally vulgar forms of European 



64 FREETHINKING AND PL A1NSPE AXING. 

superstition. The remedy is to be found in that judi- 
cious spirit of revivalism which is now so popular. We 
must learn to cherish instead of destroying. Since 
Scott revealed to us the surprising fact that mediaeval 
knights and ladies were real human beings, instead of 
names in a book, and succeeded in impressing that fact 
upon the world at large, we have made surprising pro- 
gress. We have been reviving all manner of things 
once supposed to be hopelessly dead. We have succeeded 
in building churches so carefully modelled after the old 
patterns, that William of Wykeham might rise from 
the dead and fancy that his old architects were at work. 
Nay, we have revived the men themselves. We have 
clergymen who succeed in accomplishing very fairly the 
surprising feat of living in two centuries at once ; and 
the results are held to be infinitely refreshing and 
commendable^ We have been just told, for example, 
that our new courts of law must be unimpeachable 
because there is not a window or a tower in them which 
might not have been built just as well six hundred 
years ago. Poets can affect an infantile lisp, and tell 
us legends of old times as naturally as if human beings 
at the present day had still a lively interest in them. 
We have undoubtedly obtained some very pretty 
results, and have a beautiful new set of toys, which we 
may persuade ourselves are almost capable of living 
and moving. There is only one objection to our com- 
plete success. The more skilfully we imitate obsolete 
modes of art or religion the more palpably dead they 



RELIGION AS A FINE ART. 65 

become. One of our modern imitations of an ancient 
church resembles its original as minutely as the Chinese 
imitation of a steam-engine, the only fault of which is 
that it won't work. The old building was the natural 
production of men working freely, by all means in their 
power, to give expression to their feelings : the new 
building is the work of men fettered by the self- 
imposed law that they will use the forms invented in 
an epoch permeated by different creeds, aspirations^ 
and emotions. A genuine revival could only be pro- 
duced by reproducing all the intellectual and social 
conditions under which the old art arose; and in that 
case it would have a spontaneous resurrection. Till 
then we shall only see what we see now — spasmodic 
attempts to be pretty and picturesque, with infinite 
antiquarian labour, and yet, with all our products 
marked by that feebleness of constitution charaeteristic 
of any natural or artificial object forcibly transplanted 
to an uncongenial medium. 

In art, it may be said, there is room for such methods. 
There can be no reason why the poet or the painter 
should not help us to enter into the spirit of the past, 
and to contemplate with pleasure the picturesque and 
graceful forms from which all vitality has departed. 
Speaking frankly, indeed, art of this kind, vv'hether it 
takes the shape of the careful historical romance oi 
of the pictorial representation, is apt to be rather op- 
pressive. At best it is fitted chiefly for decorative- 
purposes. The emotions to which it appeals are those 

v 



66 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

with which we enter a museum, not those with which 
we enter a church. But, at any rate, an art which has 
become entirely parasitical must fall into decay. The 
method is in fact inapplicable to the loftier forms 
amongst which, one would suppose, religion must be 
reckoned. The passionate and deep emotions, to which 
the highest art is owing, must burst forth in spon- 
taneous and original expression. A great orator must 
use the language of his day ; he cannot stop to pick 
and choose his words, and see that he has in every case 
the authority of Addison or Johnson's Dictionary. If 
preaching is bad at the present day, it is because it 
generally resembles an egg-dance, where the per- 
former is afraid of coming into collision at every step 
with one of the Thirty-nine Articles. The growing 
interest in past ages, and the warm appreciation of 
what was good in them, which should have led us to 
investigate the principles on which our ancestors acted, 
has too often led us to a servile mimicry of their results. 
Admiring the imposing aspect of a great spiritual power 
which reposed ontheprofoundest convictions of mankind, 
and provided harmonious expression for their strongest 
emotions, people attempt to retrieve that happy state of 
things by obeying the same power when it is opposed 
to all our deepest convictions, and when it is impossible 
to use its forms without unnaturally cramping our 
understandings. What was once spontaneous tends 
to become a masquerade, where the actors are nervous 
and constrained by the fear of acting out of character. 



RELIGION AS A FINE ART. 67 

It is characteristic that the commonest bit of advice 
now administered to the French people is not that 
they should cultivate that virtue of veracity of which 
their late experience should have taught them the im- 
portance ; but that they should cling to any fragments 
of belief which remain amongst them, as though dogma 
acted like a charm even when it rested not upon con- 
viction, but upon a persuasion of its convenience. The 
way to national salvation, it seems, is not to be found 
by looking facts in the face and daring to speak 
the truth ; but by invoking the help of ecclesiastical 
puppets, and trying hard to imagine them to be more 
than mere rags and wood. Is there a more contemp- 
tible sight in this world than a French Voltairian 
preaching about the excellence of faith, considered as 
a pill to cure the social earthquakes ? Or should we 
want any other explanation of French defeats, if we 
believed in the prevalence of the sentiments implied by 
one of the ministry in a saying worthy of Bossuet (so the 
newspapers called it), namely, that you could not ex- 
pect men to fight unless you promised that they should 
be paid for it in another life? Fanaticism, indeed, 
will make men fight ; but it is a delicate operation de- 
liberately to manufacture it out of extinct creeds for 
the purpose. 

Most contemporary teaching is the product of ami- 
able sentimentalism and intellectual indolence. We 
shrink with effeminate dislike from all that is severe 
and melancholy in the old creeds. Our ears are' 

p 2 



68 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

too polite to be shocked by the mention of hell. We 
wrap ourselves in a complacent optimism; and the 
only form of faith which seems to have no chance 
of revival is that which endeavoured to look things 
boldly in the face, and refused to evade the more 
awful consequences of theology. Religion is to be 
an opiate instead of a stimulant. Christianity is to 
mean nothing but the Sermon on the Mount ; and its 
historical basis and distinctive dogmas are to be with- 
drawn as much as possible from view. We are told, in 
substance, that if you take away from Christianity all 
the peculiarities by which it is distinguished from other 
religions, there will remain a very amiable system of 
morality ; and this is put forward in perfectly good 
faith as a sufficient reason for accepting it. The resi- 
duum thus left is explained to be identical with the 
very estimable doctrine dispersed through popular 
novelists and the leaders of the ( Daily Telegraph.' It 
will do very well for comfortable middle-class people, 
who have no particular reason to be discontented with 
the world, and are not apt to perplex themselves with 
speculative difficulties. The learned writer who has 
converted the Gospels into materials for a very pretty 
French romance is generally stigmatised as an infidel ; 
but his method is substantially that of most popular 
preachers. Let us all be very amiable, turn away our 
eyes from the doubts which beset thinkers, and the 
evils which drive men to revolution, and we may 
manage to get along with a very comfortable, pictu- 






RELIGION AS A FINE ART. 69 

xesque, and old-established belief. Such, we may fancy, 
was the attitude of mind of many of the spectators of 
the Ammergau play. They saw no irreverence in the 
play, though, perhaps, they might have found some- 
thing irreverent in the more free-spoken products of 
the robust faith of older times. 

The absence of profanity is, indeed, less a proof of 
the vitality of the performance than an indication that 
it has passed into the academical and unreal stage, and 
is properly superintended by modern professors of 
aesthetics. It would be as impossible now to introduce 
any ribaldry on such an occasion as to allow Cato to 
appear on the stage in a full-bottomed wig. We have 
become extremely exacting as to the harmony and 
keeping, and terribly afraid of an anachronism. That 
is just because the whole affair is to us, whatever it 
may be to the performers, a mere artistic performance, 
and is entirely divorced from any reference to fact. A 
modern religious painting is very certain not to offend 
against the accepted canons of good taste, for the very 
reason that it appeals to no stronger sentiments. Cos- 
tumes have become more perfect, and the proprieties 
of time and place are more carefully observed, in pro- 
portion as the old animating influence has been with- 
drawn. And the same progress in propriety and the 
same decay in intensity is visible in our other religious 
observances. Nobody, except some vulgar Dissenter, 
dares now to make a joke in a sermon any more than 
he cares to start a new heresy. Those are symptoms 



70 FREETH1NKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

of a period of superabundant energy and vitality ; 
not of a time when we are eminently respectable, dull, 
and decorous. And yet we have become so much 
accustomed to this mode of regarding religions, that it 
has passed into a kind of axiom that our creeds cannot 
be beautiful unless they are in some degree false. We 
have seen it lately asserted, that the modern view of 
Christianity is that it is the depository of the profoundest 
truths although the history is an entire delusion. That 
is to say, in plain language, that you must tell a certain 
number of lies in order to secure the acceptance of a 
certain quantity of truth. Pure unmixed truth is too 
dazzling for the vulgar mind. It must be judiciously 
adulterated, and combined with a skilfully composed 
alloy of myth and legend, in order to impress the popular 
imagination. It is difficult to put into words a more 
complete expression of utter scepticism ; and we may 
safely assume that no enduring superstructure can be 
raised upon so unsafe a foundation. One may, indeed, 
manufacture a dilettante religion ; something which to 
professors of aesthetics will appear to be exceedingly 
graceful and pretty, but which will fail really to touch 
the hearts and consciences of mankind. Even its own 
advocates admit that a doctrine of this kind is intended 
as a mere stop-gap ; it is intended to patch up a diffi- 
culty, and to make a secure paving across which we 
may pass to revolutionary conclusions. But surely 
it is better, here as elsewhere, to look our perplexities 
in the face ; to give up this feeble attempt at vamping 



RELIGION AS A FINE ART. 71 

up old dogmas to look as good as new. We must be 
content to abandon much that is beautiful and that 
once was excellent. But the more we really believe 
that religion is founded upon enduring instincts which 
will find an expression in one form or another, the less 
anxious we should be to retain the old formulas, and 
the more confident that by saying what we think, in 
the plainest possible language, we shall be really 
taking the shortest road to discovering the new doc- 
trines which will satisfy at once our reason and our 
imagination. The reluctance to part company with 
beliefs which have been so valuable in their day is in 
every way amiable and respectable ; but, however slow 
we may be to acknowledge the truth, it is in fact the 
worst compliment we can pay them, when we endeavour 
to make the mere empty shams do the work of realities, 
and try to play at believing when we can no longer 
believe in earnest. Certainly the first results of an 
endeavour to be perfectly sincere may be the destruc- 
tion of many beautiful fancies with which we cannot 
part without a pang ; but the plunge must be made, 
and the sooner it is made, the more quickly we shall 
arrive at a really satisfactory result. 



72 



CHAPTER III. 

DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 

We are going through that change in regard to Mr. 
Darwin's speculations which has occurred so often 
in regard to scientific theories. When first pro- 
pounded, divines regarded them with horror, and 
declared them to be radically opposed not only to the 
Book of Genesis, but to all the religious beliefs which 
elevate us above the brutes. The opinions have 
gained wider acceptance ; and, whatever may be the 
ultimate verdict as to their soundness, it certainly 
cannot be doubted that they are destined profoundly 
to modify the future current of thought. As Dar- 
winism has won its way to respectability, as it has 
ceased to be the rash conjecture of some hasty specu- 
lator, and is received with all the honours of grave 
scientific discussion, divines have naturally come to 
look upon it with different eyes. They have gradually 
sidled up towards the object which at first struck them 
as so dark and portentous a phenomenon, and dis- 
covered that after all it is not of so diabolic a nature 
as they had imagined. Its breath does not wither up 
every lofty aspiration, and every worthy conception of 
the destiny of humanity. Darwinists are not neces- 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 73 

sarily hoofed and horned monsters, but are occasionally 
of pacific habits, and may even be detected in the act 
of going to church. Room may be made for their 
tenets alongside of the Thirty-nine Articles, by a little 
judicious crowding and re-arrangement. Some of the 
old literal interpretations of the Scriptures must 
perhaps be abandoned, but after all they were in far 
too precarious a position already to be worth much 
lamentation. It would be entirely unfair to accuse 
persons who have gone through this change of the 
smallest conscious insincerity. They are not merely 
endeavouring to curry favour with an adversary 
because he has become too formidable to be openly 
encountered. They have simply found out, in all 
honesty and sincerity, that the object of their terror 
has been invested with half his terrible attributes by 
their own hasty imagination. They are exemplifying 
once more the truth conveyed in an old story. A man 
hangs on to the edge of a precipice through the dark 
hours of the night, believing that if his grasp fails him 
he will be instantly dashed to a thousand fragments ; 
at length his strength will bear it no longer, and he 
falls — only to discover that his feet had been all the 
time within a couple of inches of the ground. The 
precipice was a creation of his fancy, and the long 
agony entirely thrown away. So we may believe that 
a good many sound divines have resigned themselves 
to the inevitable plunge, and are astonished to find all 
their vital functions continuing to operate pretty nearly 



74 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

as well after as before the catastrophe. Perhaps they 
feel rather foolish, though of course they do not say 
so. One could wish, certainly, that under these cir- 
cumstances they would betray a little less uneasiness ; 
and that the discovery that the doctrine is harmless 
might precede by a rather longer interval the admission 
that it is true. There would be less room for unkindly 
cavils. However, it is being discovered, in one way or 
other, that religion is really not interested in these 
discussions. We have lately seen, for example, in a 
very orthodox Romanist organ, that; theology has 
nothing, or next to nothing, to say to Mr. Darwin's 
theories. It is permissible to believe either that man 
was made by a single act of the creative energy, or 
that a pair of apes was selected and improved gradually 
into humanity, as, if the comparison be admissible, 
human processes may gradually form the carrier-pigeon 
out of his wild congeners. We must, indeed, hold that 
the operation was miraculous ; and as the tendency of 
scientific inquiry is to banish the miraculous, we may 
say that there is still a fundamental opposition between 
the teaching of the Church and Mr. Darwin. When 
we consider how easily the word ' miraculous' may 
itself be rarefied until no particular meaning is left, 
we may doubt whether this opposition may not be 
removed ; the verdict of science as to the mode in 
which the phenomena succeeded each other might be 
accepted, though there would be a difference of opinion 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 75 

as to the efficient cause of the change, and thus a kind 
of compromise is effected between the rival forces. 

Meanwhile, whatever the validity of this and similar 
artifices, it may be worth while to consider a little 
more closely what is the prospect before us. Let us 
suppose that Darwinism is triumphant at every point. 
Imagine it to be demonstrated that the lono; line of our 
genealogy can be traced back to the lowest organisms ; 
suppose that our descent from the ape is conclusively 
proved, and the ape's descent from the tidal animal, 
and the tidal animal's descent from some ultimate 
monad, in which all the vital functions are reduced to 
the merest rudiments. Or, if we will, let us suppose 
that a still further step has been taken, and the origin 
of life discovered, so that, by putting a certain mixture 
in a hermetically sealed bottle, we can create our own 
ancestors over again. When we endeavour firmly to 
grasp that conception, we are, of course, sensible of a 
certain shock. We have a prejudice or two derived 
from the Zoological Gardens and elsewhere, which, as 
it were, causes our gorge to rise ; but when we have 
fairly allowed the conception to sink into our minds, 
when we have brought our other theories into harmony 
with it, and have lost that uncomfortable sense of 
friction and distortion which is always produced by 
the intrusion of a new set of ideas, what is the final 
result of it all ? What is it that we have lost, and 
what have we acquired in its place ? It is surely 



76 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

worth while to face the question boldly, and look into 
the worst fears that can be conjured up by these 
terrible discoverers. Probably, after such an inspec- 
tion, the thought that will occur to any reasonable 
man will be, what does it matter? What possible 
difference can it make to me whether I am sprung from 
an ape or an angel ? The one main fact is that some- 
how or other I am here. How I came here may be a 
very interesting question to speculative persons, but 
my thoughts and sensations and faculties are the same 
on any hypothesis. Sunlight is just as bright if the 
sun was once a nebulous mass. The convenience of 
our arms and legs is not in the slightest degree affected 
by the consideration that our great-great-grandfathers 
were nothing better than more or less moveable 
stomachs. The poet's imagination and the philosopher's 
reason are none the worse because the only sign of life 
given by their ancestors was some sort of vague con- 
tractility in a shapeless jelly. Our own personal 
history, if we choose to trace it far enough back, has 
taken us through a series of changes almost equally 
extensive, and we do not think any the worse of our- 
selves on that account. Our affections and our intel- 
lectual faculties are in existence. They are the pri- 
mary data of the problem, and as long as we are 
conscious of their existence we need not worry our- 
selves by asking whether they began to exist by some 
abrupt change or gradually rose into existence through 
a series of changes. There is still quite as much room 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 77 

as ever for the loftiest dreams that visit the imagina- 
tions of saints or poets. The mode in which we express 
ourselves must, of course, be slightly altered ; but so 
long as the same instincts exist which sought sratifica- 
tion in the old language, we need not doubt but 
they will frame a new one out of the changed materials 
of thought. The fact that religion exists is sufficient 
demonstration that men feel the need of loving each 
other, of elevating the future and the past above the 
present, and of rising above the purely sensual wants 
of our nature ; the need will exist just as much, whether 
we take one view or other of a set of facts which, on 
any hypothesis, happened many thousands of years 
before we were born, and in regard to which a con- 
tented ignorance is far from being an impossible frame 
of mind. One can understand, after a little trouble, 
how it was that at a particular period of history people 
fancied that disinterested love would leave the world, 
and a moral chaos be produced, if it should be made to 
appear that it was not literally true that we are all 
descended from a man who was turned out of a garden 
for eating an apple. The infidels who assailed, and the 
orthodox who defended that dogma, really believed 
that it was an essential corner-stone in the foundations 
of all religion, which once removed, nothing but a 
universal crash could follow. Even the statement that 
it might possibly be an allegory instead of a historical 
record nearly frightened our prosaic ancestors out of 
their wits. Remove one brick from the cunningly 



78 FREETH1NKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

adjusted fabric of orthodoxy, prove that a line of the 
Hebrew Scriptures was erroneous, and God would 
vanish from the world, heaven and hell become empty 
names, all motives for doing good be removed, and the 
earth become a blank and dreary wilderness. In re- 
mote country towns and small clerical coteries some 
vestiges of this cheerful opinion still linger. Most men 
have grown beyond it, and have found some broader 
basis for their hopes and aspirations. And yet, when 
one comes to think about it, is not the alarm which has 
been caused by the statement that Adam was the great- 
grandson of an ape equally preposterous ? Why should 
it have so fluttered the dove-cotes of the Church ? If 
science could have proved divines to be apes them- 
selves, there would have been some ground for vexa- 
tion ; but that was obviously out of the question, and 
their alarm would only prove that they were drawing 
some very unwarrantable inferences, or else by asso- 
ciation of ideas had become unable to distinguish 
between the essence and the remotest accidental ac- 
companiments of the faith. What interest can the 
highest part of our nature really take in a dispute as 
to whether certain facts did or did not occur many 
ages ago? The prima facie presumption is, certainly, 
that any change in our opinions would affect rather 
the external imagery than the faith which it embodies. 
One would say at first sight that religion is no niore 
likely to leave the world because we have new views 
as to the mode in which the world began, than poetry 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 79 

to vanish as soon as we have ceased to believe in the 
historical accuracy of the siege of Troy. Man possesses 
certain spiritual organs, whose function it is to produce 
religion. Religion could only be destroyed by re- 
moving the organs, and not by supplying them with 
slightly different food. 

The precise nature of the fears entertained by the 
orthodox is revealed by the arguments generally 
brought to bear against the new doctrine. There is, 
for example, what may be called the metaphysical 
argument, which has taken the place of the argument 
from the Book of Genesis. It is substantially an attempt 
to prove that the gap between the brute and the 
human mind is so wide that we cannot imagine it to be 
filled up by any continuous series. It is argued at 
great length that instinct differs from reason not in 
degree but in kind, or that brutes do not possess even 
the rudiments of what we call a moral sense. The 
argument has long been more or less familiar. Ani- 
mals have always been regarded with a certain dislike 
by metaphysical arrogance. It has been held to be 
a conclusive objection to the validity of certain argu- 
ments for the immortality of the soul, that they would 
open the path to heaven to our dogs as well as to our- 
selves. It does not seem very easy to give any 
satisfactory reason for the extreme abhorrence with 
which such a consummation is regarded, or to say why 
we should claim a monopoly in another world which 
we do not enjoy in this. Philosophers, indeed, have 



80 FREETIIINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

gone further, and denied to animals even the most 
moderate share of our own capacities, and have set 
them down as nothing better than machines. One is 
heartily glad to see the poor beasts getting their 
revenge in public opinion, and being recognised as our 
relations after having been almost repudiated as fellow- 
creatures. The distinctions, indeed, which have been 
drawn seem to us to rest upon no better foundation 
than a great many other metaphysical distinctions: 
that is, the assumption that because you can give two 
things different names, they must therefore have differ- 
ent natures. It is difficult to understand how anybody 
who has ever kept a dog, or seen an elephant, can 
have any doubts as to an animal's power of performing 
the essential processes of reasoning. We have been 
saying in thousands of treatises on logic, All men are 
mortal : Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal. 
The elephant reasons: All boys are bun-giving animals; 
that biped is a boy ; therefore I will hold out my trunk 
to him. A philosopher says, The barometer is rising, 
and therefore we shall have fine weather ; his dog says, 
My master is putting on his hat, and therefore I am 
going to have a walk. A dog equals a detective in the 
sharpness with which he infers general objectionable- 
ness from ragged clothes. A clever dog draws more 
refined inferences. If he is not up to enough simple 
arithmetic to count seven, he can at least say, Every- 
body is looking so gloomy, that it must be Sunday 
If he is a sheep dog, he is probably more 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 81 

capable of finding his way over hills than most mem- 
bers of the Alpine Club, and capable of combining his 
actions with a view to making the sheep — whose rea- 
soning powers are limited — follow the right track. He 
can found judgments on cautious experiment, as any- 
body will admit who has seen a dog testing the strength 
of a plank which he has to cross, or measuring the height 
of a jump. In fact, a dog is constantly performing rudi- 
mentary acts of reason, which can only be distinguished 
from our own by the fact that he cannot put them into 
words. He can understand a few simple words ; and 
though he cannot articulate, he can make sounds indica- 
tive of his wants and emotions, which are to words what 
the embryo is to the perfect organism. He cannot, 
it is true, make use of such sounds as da, stha, or ga 9 
to signify give, stand, and sing. And here, exclaims a 
great philologist, is the finally impassable partition wall. 
"With all respect for his authority, I cannot imagine that 
this grammatical dike is destined to hold back the de- 
luge any better than its predecessors. What is the differ- 
ence between da and bow-wow ? Simply, I presume, that 
the one indicates and the other does not indicate a certain 
power of framing abstract ideas. The language will 
follow as a natural result when intellectual power is de- 
veloped; and the use of the words is merely noticeable 
as a symptom of the existence of the power. But we 
can discover the presence of intellect by other marks 
than the use of vocal signs. Granting that a dog 
cannot generalise sufficiently to say da, no reasonable 

G 






82 FREETIIINKING AND PLAINS PEAKING. 

observer can doubt that be Las a rudimentary faculty 
of generalisation. There is not a dog in England too 
stupid to understand vaguely the simple word stha, 
though there is not a dog in England who is clever 
enough to pronounce it. But capacity to understand is 
as good a proof of the presence of vocal intelligence, 
though in an inferior degree, as the capacity to speak. 
A dog frames a general concept of cats or sheep, 
and knows the corresponding words as well as a phi- 
lologer. It is just as hopeless to attempt to prove by 
metaphysics that a gradual increase of intelligence 
would not generate a power of speaking in an animal 
as to prove the same in regard to a child of six months 
old. There is no a priori presumption, except the 
presumption against miraculous interference, against 
reasoning animals coming into existence by one process 
rather than another, and Kant and Hume must fight 
out their quarrel without the slightest reference to the 
series of actual phenomena. 

The condemnation of the poor brutes as non-moral 
(if we may use such a word) seems to be still more 
monstrous. We need not speak of exceptional stories, 
such as the legend in a recent French newspaper of 
the sensitive dog who committed suicide when deserted 
by his friends ; but who can doubt that his dog has 
something which serves as a very fair substitute for a 
sense of duty ? Could anything be more like human 
heroism than the conduct of the poor collie who drove 
home her master's sheep, leaving her new-born puppies 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 83 

by the side of the road? Or, to avoid particular 
instances, is there a barrister in England who can 
blush half so expressively as a dog found out in sharp 
practice— blushing, of course, being taken in a sense 
applicable to the dog's tail? Whether wild animals 
have such a sense of the value of any positive laws is 
more than we know ; but wild animals, down to the 
lowest orders, show at least the maternal instinct. The 
devotion of beasts to their young belongs, one would 
say, to the highest order of moral beauty — except that 
it extends too low down amongst animated beings to 
please some people. Yet we may presume that the 
most hard-hearted of metaphysicians would find it 
hard to suppress an emotion of sympathy and approval 
at the sight of a bird overcoming its timidity to fight 
for its little puff-balls of children. It is a more 
•pathetic if not a more sublime sight than Kant's 
eternally cited starry heavens. The metaphysical 
distinction between material and formal morality is as 
irrelevant as other such distinctions. Its meaning is 
simply that, though an animal may be capable of affec- 
tion and self-sacrifice, it cannot construct the general 
formula that we ought to love our children. Certainly 
no beast has framed an abstract conception of duty. 
Neither, it is said, have some savages risen to that 
idea. But, given the emotion which has to be dis- 
ciplined and the rudiments of the intellect which is to 
frame the formula, and there is no difficulty in sup- 
posing that general rules will be discovered as the 

g2 



84 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

intellect is developed. We see in animals the germs 
of a sense of duty as of a sense of the beautiful, though 
they cannot talk about moral philosophy or aesthetics. 
The moral sense in its full development implies a 
faculty for observing consequences and stating general 
principles which the brute does not possess, but he has 
the rudiments both of the reason and the emotion, and 
what follows is a mere question of degree. 

The argument, however, has another fatal weakness, 
if it is intended to raise a presumption against the pos- 
sible passage from apehood to manhood. Assume, if 
you please, that the difference is as wide as possible. 
Suppose that reason and the moral sense are distinct 
from the rudimentary thoughts and passions that ani- 
mate the feeble brute-brain not merely in degree but in 
kind. That will not raise any presumption that there 
must be a sudden gap in the chain of animated beings, 
unless you can prove that the new element, whatever 
it may be called, must enter, as it were, at one bound. 
If reason be radically different from instinct, yet reason 
may be present in some creatures in a merely rudi- 
mentary form. The question, indeed, does not admit 
of argument. We always have before our eyes a 
perfect and uninterrupted series. The child of six 
months old is less intelligent than a full-grown dog ; 
and if we would imagine the development of man from 
monkey, we have only to suppose the first monkey to 
be the equal of an average baby (say) of one year old, 
the monkey's son to be equal to a baby of a year and 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 8 

a day, and so on. We may thus proceed by perfectly 
imperceptible stages, and in the course of three or four 
thousand generations we shall get a man-monkey 
fully equal in intelligence to the average Hottentot. 
Thence upwards we cannot deny the possibility of 
development without heterodoxy. In short, by inter- 
polating a sufficient number of terms we may form an 
ideal, which, for anything we can say, may be an 
actual, series ending with the man and beginning with 
the inferior animals, in which there shall not be a 
single violent transition. The question whether reason 
is or is not specifically distinct from instinct is simply 
irrelevant. In one case we must suppose that it 
begins by entering in homoeopathic doses ; in the other, 
that it is simply the development of certain lower 
faculties ; in either case the animal will shade into the 
human intellect by degrees as imperceptible as those 
by which night changes into dawn. 

The argument from the possibility of forming such 
a series has been ridiculed, but simply from a mis- 
appreciation of its bearing. The possibility does not, 
of course, prove the actual occurrence of the supposed 
evolution. But it meets completely the supposed 
a priori objection. The whole meaning of the meta- 
physical objection is that there is a gap, marked by the 
point at which a living being says da, so wide that we 
cannot suppose it to have been traversed. The reply 
is that it can be traversed because we can point to the 
completion of a series many terms of which actually 



86 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

exist 5 whilst the missing terms need only be supposed 
to follow the law already established. The ground is 
therefore left entirely free to the man of science to say 
whether or not such terms have in fact existed. The 
metaphysical argument is shown to be irrelevant ; and 
the method of enquiry must be the ordinary method of 
scientific enquiry. In astronomy, metaphysicians tried 
to hamper the progress of investigation by the argument 
that a body could not act where it was not ; and simi- 
larly, they try to meet evolutionists by arguing for the 
essential discontinuity of nature. The reply is that in 
both cases the a priori difficulty is not to the purpose 
and that we must simply appeal to experience. The 
question of the truth of Darwinism, like the question 
of the truth of Newton's discoveries, must be submitted 
to that test ; and all attempts to exclude the appeal to 
facts by appealing to our intuitive knowledge must be 
suppressed. I am incompetent to pronounce any judg- 
ment upon the value of Mr. Darwin's doctrines. I am 
only trying to point out what is the tribunal which 
must ultimately decide the question. Kant has no 
more to say to the problem than Moses. j> Observa- 
tion alone can determine a question of concrete fact ; 
and whilst the decision is being considered, we may 
ask how far we are interested in the result. 

It is here that we come upon the confusion already 
noticed. It results from mixing metaphysical enquiries 
about the what ? with scientific enquiries into the how ? 
A man of science says (possibly he makes a mistake, 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 87 

but that is not to the purpose). Mix such and such 
elements under such and such conditions, and a living 
organism will make its appearance. The theologian 
sometimes meets this statement as if it were equivalent 
to an assertion that life is nothing but an arrangement 
of matter. The man of science has really said nothing 
of the kind : he does not know what is the essence of 
life or of matter ; he has merely to do with the order 
in which phenomena occur; and has absolutely no 
concern with the occult substratum in which they are 
supposed to inhere. The utmost that he can ever say 
— if he can ever say so much — would come to this : 
Bring together a set of the phenomena which we call 
molecules and there will result a series of the pheno- 
mena which we call vital ; but what molecules are, or 
what life is, is a question beyond his competence. 
Similarly, when he proceeds a step farther and traces 
the origin of our moral sense to some dumb instinct in 
the animal world, he is not really speaking treason 
against the dignity and importance of morality. Mr. 
Browning, in one of his poems, speaks of some con- 
temptible French author who explained the origin of 
modesty by referring, as only a very free-speaking 
person could refer, to the mode in which the sexual 
instinct operated upon savage natures. If that 
Frenchman meant to infer that the modesty of a 
civilised being is no better than the semi-bestial 
instincts of a man-ape, he was as contemptible as the 
poet could wish, but he was also grossly illogical. His 



88 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

observation merely went to show by what means one 
of the most essential of social instincts was originally 
generated in the world ; and it is not the less essential 
because in its first origin it partook of the grossness of 
the animal in which it was implanted. Mr. MacLennan 
has written a very interesting book, tending to show 
that the original marriage ceremony was everywhere 
like that which survives in Australia to this day, where 
the wild human being knocks down his beloved with a 
club, and drags her off to his own den. Suppose this 
to be true, would it follow that marriage in the most 
refined and purest societies was no better than forcible 
abduction as practised in the Australian bush ? Surely 
it would follow no more than the development of a man 
from a monkey would prove that men have still tails, 
or that the brain of a Newton is no better than that 
which directs a chimpanzee in its search for nuts. In 
short it is sufficiently plain that we do not diminish 
the value of any human accomplishments by tracing 
them back to their remote origin in the brute, or even 
the insect creation. That shudder which runs through 
us when we are invited to recognise our poor relations 
in the Regent's Park is gratuitous. The philosopher 
may have thrown more light upon the process by which 
we came to be what we are ; but he does not, for he 
obviously cannot, argue that we are other than we are. 
Whether in pursuing our genealogy we stop short at 
6 who was the son of Adam ' or carry it back through 
a vast series of links to c who was the son of a monkey,' 




DARWINISM AND DIVINITY, 89 



the fact of our present existence, with our present 
instincts, aspirations and endowments, remains precisely 
what it was. The prospect, indeed, is improved for 
our remote descendants, 6 far on in summers that we 
shall not see ; ' but for us poor creatures living and 
moving in this nineteenth century after Christ, the 
circumstances remain unaltered. Turn it as you will, 
we are the base from which the line is measured, and 
not the indeterminate point to be discovered by a process 
of trigonometry. 

A vast amount of good indignation is thrown away 
from the neglect of these obvious distinctions. Philo- 
sophers, divines, and poets shrink with horror, or shrug 
their shoulders with sublime contempt, at the supposed 
materialism of Darwinists. They are simply slaying 
the slain ; a process so pleasant that its popularity is 
not surprising. It is as easy as it is edifying to expose 
materialism, but, for practical purposes, you might as 
well confute the Grnostics or attack the doctrine that 
all things are made of water. Materialism, in the proper 
sense of the word, has died because it is too absurd a 
doctrine even for philosophers. As Comte says in 
regard to atheism and theology, it is the most illogical 
form of metaphysics. Modern men of science have 
abandoned it as completely as metaphysicians. If 
human knowledge be merely relative, and we are re- 
strained by the law of our nature from penetrating 
to the absolute essences of things, it comes to much the 
same, whether we call everything matter or everything 



90 FREETHINKING AND PL AINSPE 'AXING. 

spirit ; for in each case, we only assert that everything 
is some unknowable X or Y. Materialism in its really 
degrading shape, as meaning the method of explaining 
the laws of mind by pure mechanics, and falling 
into confusion between the senses and the intellect, 
is not only an extinct doctrine, but is utterly irrelevant 
to Darwinism in any shape. And thus the tendency 
which is really attacked is not a legitimate consequence 
of Darwinism, but merely a complete misapprehension 
of his meaning which Mr. Darwin would doubtless be 
the first to denounce. It no doubt gives a man a 
complacent sense of superiority when he expresses his 
utter contempt for people who believe that men are 
mere lumps of matter, or that intellect is made of 
phosphates. Only it would be as well, if he would first 
tell us who were the people who held the obnoxious 
doctrine. To say that intellect is made of phosphates 
is not so much error as sheer nonsense. If it were dis- 
covered that the presence of phosphates in the brain 
were an essential condition of genius, there would be 
nothing really more degrading in the discovery than 
in the familiar fact that the presence of air in the lungs, 
or food in the stomach, is an essential condition of 
genius as of life. It is only by twisting the doctrine 
into a form in which no thinking man ever holds it, by 
forcing the man of science to become a metaphysician, 
in spite of his most energetic protests, and by interpret- 
ing what is said of phenomena as a statement about 
things in themselves, that a degrading turn can be given 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 91 

to the theory so easily denounced. By all means let 
philosophers tear to pieces their conventional men of 
straw ; they do some service by suppressing the gross 
popular misinterpretations of Mr. Darwin's theories, and 
call attention to the necessity of guarding against such 
inaccurate conceptions ; but they have no right to 
impute such notions to the real supporters of the 
doctrine. 

Is, then, the alarm which has been excited in men's 
minds totally unreasonable? In one sense it would 
seem to be so. The speculations of which we have 
been speaking are absolutely harmless to anyone who 
holds — as surely every sincere believer ought to hold 
— that religion depends upon certain instincts whose 
existence cannot be explained away by any possible 
account of the mode by which they came into existence. 
Property is not less sacred in the eyes of a reasonable 
man because it may have originated in mere physical 
force ; nor religion because it first dawned upon man- 
kind in the vague guesses of some torpid brain, which 
fancied that a bigger Caliban was moving the stars 
and rolling the thunder. But it may be true that the 
new theories will transform the mode in which men 
interpret the universe to themselves, and will therefore 
destroy some of the old formulas which involved dif- 
ferent perceptions. To those who have succeeded in 
persuading themselves that any set of Articles con- 
structed some centuries ago were to be final and inde- 
structible expressions of truth, the prospect may cer- 



92 FMEETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

tainly be distressing. There may, indeed, be no posi- 
tive logical irreconcilability between orthodoxy and 
Darwinism. A little more straining of a few phrases 
which have proved themselves to be sufficiently elastic, 
and the first obvious difficulty may be removed. The 
first chapter of Genesis has survived Sir Charles Lyell; 
it may be stretched sufficiently to include Mr. Darwin. 
But in questions of this kind there is a kind of logical 
instinct which outruns the immediate application of 
the new theories. The mere change of perspective 
does much. When the sun was finally placed in the 
centre of the heavens instead of the earth, the few 
texts which apparently opposed were easily adapted to 
the new theories. But there was a further change of 
infinitely greater importance, which, though not so 
easily embodied in direct logical issues, profoundly 
modified all theological conceptions. When people 
began to realise the fact that we live in a wretched 
little atom of a planet dancing about the sun, instead 
of being the whole universe, with a few stars to save 
candlelight, the ancient orthodoxy was shaken to its base. 
It is impossible to read the controversies which marked 
the great intellectual revolt of the last two centuries 
without seeing how much men's minds were influenced 
by the simple consideration that Christians were a 
small numerical minority of the human race, and the 
habitation of the race a mere grain of dust in the 
universe. The recognition of these two facts, that 
there were millions of heathens, and that the universe 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 9$ 

was a very large place, really upset the old theology. 
The facts, indeed, were more or less known before, 
and were not capable of furnishing syllogisms abso- 
lutely incompatible with any orthodox dogma. And 
yet the mere change in the point of view, working 
rather upon the imagination than the reason, gradually 
made the old positions untenable. A similar change 
is being brought about by the application of that 
method of which Darwinism is at present the most 
conspicuous example. Possibly the change may be of 
even greater importance. Certainly it is of far too 
great importance to be more than dimly indicated here. 
Briefly it may be described as the substitution of a 
belief in gradual evolution for a belief in spasmodic 
action and occasional outbursts of creative energy ; of 
the acceptance of the corollary that we must seek for 
the explanation of facts or ideas by tracing their 
history instead of accounting for them by some short 
a jiriori method ; and thus of the adoption of the 
historical method in all manner of investigations into 
social, and political, and religious problems which were 
formerly solved by a much more summary, if not more 
satisfactory method. 

It is curious to remark how the influence of new 
methods penetrates the minds of those who would most 
strenuously repudiate some of the results to which 
they lead. We may illustrate the point by an analogy 
drawn from the theory of which we have been speaking. 
Mr. Wallace has described what he calls protective 



"94 FJREETHINKING AND PLAINS PEAKING. 

resemblances. A butterfly which precisely suits the 
palates of certain birds would be speedily exterminated 
if it were not for an ingenious device. It cleverly 
passes itself off under false colours by imitating the 
external shape of some other butterfly, which the bird 
considers as disgusting. So oysters, if they were quick 
enough, might evade the onslaught of human appetites 
by taking the external resemblance of periwinkles. A 
very similar variety of protective resemblance may be 
detected in the history of opinions. The old-fashioned 
doctrine remains essentially the same, but it changes 
its phraseology so as to look exactly like its intrusive 
rival. We have already given an instance. It is 
permissible, it appears, for orthodox Catholics to hold 
that the series of facts alleged by Mr. Darwin actually 
occurred, and that the ape changed by slow degrees 
into the man; only they must save themselves by 
calling the process miraculous, and thus, for a time at 
least, the old theory may be preserved. Perhaps it 
will strike people in the course of years, that if all the 
phenomena conform to the law established by philo- 
sophers, it is rather absurd to say that they do not 
conform in virtue of the law, but in virtue of a specific 
interference of Divine power. Still the ingenuity of 
the artifice is obvious, and it affords an instructive 
example of the method of reconciling old things and 
new. In the same way, the theological doctrine of 
development mimics the historical accounts of the 
process by which opinions have actually been formed. 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 95 

Just as the sceptic rashly fancies that he has brought 
matters to a conclusive issue, the theologian evades 
his grasp by putting on the external form of the very 
doctrines which he has been opposing. 

Thus, for example, Dr. Newman argues in the 
' Grammar of Assent' for the doctrine of the Atonement, 
on the ground (amongst others) that a similar belief is 
found to exist in all barbarous nations. It may seem 
strange, he goes on to say, that he should take his 
ideas of natural religion from the initial and not from 
the final stage of human development. His ' answer is 
obvious' (all these ingenious manipulations of argument 
are only too obvious), and it comes shortly to this — that 
our 'so-called civilisation' is a one-sided development of 
man's nature, favouring the intellect, but ignoring the 
conscience ; and that therefore it is e no wonder that 
the religion in which it issues has no sympathy with 
the hopes and fears of the awakened soul, or with those 
frightful presentiments which are expressed in the 
worship and the traditions of the heathen.' In simpler 
times the resemblances between the heathen and the 
orthodox religion would have been indignantly denied, 
or regarded as diabolic parodies. Now the Catholic 
divine is as ready as the philosopher to trace out the 
analogy, though he puts a different interpretation upon 
it. The philosopher, that is, regards the Catholic 
religion as preserving the remains of older forms of 
thought which are gradually expiring under the in- 
fluence of free enquiry. The divine accepts just the 



96" FHEETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

same facts,, but he regards the old barbarous super- 
stition as a dim reflection of revealed truths, whilst a 
satisfactory reason is found for putting the civilised 
intellect out of court altogether. The verdict of the 
stupid, ferocious savage, who makes an idol out of a 
bit of wood and a red rag, and then pacifies its spite 
by slaughtering fowls or prisoners in its honour, is 
declared to be superior to that of the modern philo- 
sopher; who, it is true, has a scruple or two not 
known to the savage, but whose conscience has not 
been properly developed. Sometimes, indeed, it has 
been developed so awkwardly as to revolt against 
theological dogmas. This, however, is beside the point. 
It is clear that modern tendencies have penetrated 
into the hostile camp. It is the much-abused philo- 
sopher who has taught us to take a new interest in 
the lower religions of the world, instead of summarily 
rejecting them as the work of devils. The mere fact 
that we have risen to such a conception as that of 
a comparative study of religion is certainly not suffi- 
cient by itself to confute the pretensions of what 
claims to be an exclusive revelation. It is possible 
to adapt the old to the new beliefs by the methods 
of which Dr. Newman's argument is a daring example. 
After Mr. Darwin and his followers have traced 
out the resemblance between men and monkeys with 
the utmost possible clearness, it is always possible for 
a dogmatist to discover some good reason why the 
transition should have required a miraculous inter- 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 97 

vention. In the same way, the analogies which the 
philosopher may discover between the various religions 
of the world will never convince him that his own 
special creed is not of supernatural origin, though the 
others which resemble it so strangely are traceable to 
the spontaneous working of the human intellect. A 
very little dexterity is required to raise the resemblance 
to that point at which it becomes an argument for the 
reasonableness of the supposed revelation, and is yet 
no argument against its supernatural character. Admit 
your naked savage to prove that man has a need for 
the belief in Atonement, but do not let him be produced 
as evidence that the belief finds its most congenial 
element and grows to the largest dimensions in a 
debased and torpid intellect. By such logical mani- 
pulation as this, the accumulation of uncomfortable 
facts may long be rendered harmless. It all depends 
upon the way in which you look at things. The acute 
thinkers who have helped to elaborate any ancient 
system of thought have always provided a proper set 
of pigeon-holes in which inconvenient facts may be 
stowed away. It is long before the facts become 
weighty enough to break down the framework. But 
no agent is so powerful in bringing about the change 
as the subtle and penetrating influence of a new 
method. It may not follow logically that because 
catastrophes have been banished from geology, and 
the series of animated beings has been proved to be 

H 



98 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

continuous, therefore the same conceptions should be 
applied to the religious beliefs of mankind. And yet 
nobody can doubt that in practice the influence would 
be unmistakeable. The burden of proof would be 
shifted, and that in itself makes an amazing difference. 
The popular belief has hitherto been that, unless you 
could prove the contrary, it would be reasonable to 
suppose that the transition from monkey to man 
involved a sudden leap. If it came to be the popular 
belief that, unless you could prove the contrary, men 
must be supposed to have developed out of monkeys 
hj the forces now at work, the imagination would 
outrun the reason. It would be assumed that a religion 
was the growth of that stage of development at which 
the human intellect had arrived, and not the work of a 
series of sudden interferences. Christianity would be 
a phenomenon to be studied like others by the inves- 
tigation of the conditions under which it arose, and the 
advocates of a theory of supernatural intervention 
would have to encounter a set of established beliefs 
instead of finding them in their favour. This is the 
imperceptible intellectual influence which gradually 
permeates and transforms the prevalent conceptions by 
a process which is as irresistible as it is difficult to 
define by accurate formulae. Religious instincts, we 
rightly say, are indestructible ; but the forms in which 
they may be embodied are indefinitely variable, and 
no one can say how fast and how far the influence of a 
change worked in one department of thought may 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 99 

gradually spread by a silent contagion to others appa- 
rently removed from it. 

Thus, admitting to the fullest extent that Darwinism 
not only does not threaten, but does not even tend to 
threaten, the really valuable elements of our religious 
opinions, it is quite consistent to maintain that it may 
change the conceptions in which they are at present 
embodied to an extent to which it is impossible to 
assign any limits. Darwinism, for example, does not, 
it may be said, make it more difficult to believe in a God. 
On the contrary, it may be fairly urged that a theory 
which tends to bring order out of chaos, and to reveal 
some general scheme working throughout all time and 
space, renders it more easy to maintain such rational 
theism as is now possible. It helps us to form some 
dim guess as to whence we come and whither we are 
going, though the guess is of a different kind from 
theological conjectures. And yet we must admit, to 
be frank, that ( belief in God ' is a phrase covering so 
many radically different states of mind, that a cate- 
gorical yes or no can hardly be given to the question. 
At the present day it is too often used to mean dis- 
belief in man. It connotes, at least, the opinion that 
reason is a delusion, and progress a sham. But if, 
in a more philosophical sense, belief in God means 
belief in a ( general stream of tendency,' Darwinism, 
so far from weakening that belief, helps us to map out 
some small part of the stream, though its source and 
its end be hidden in impenetrable mystery. On the 

H 2 



100 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAK1NG. 

other hand, Darwinism is clearly opposed to the more 
popular conceptions of theology. It is incompatible 
with that theory of the universe to which we owe 
Paley's almighty watchmaker. Paley, indeed, was 
more or less aware of this scientific difficulty, and 
gave some answer to its earlier form, though he was 
utterly blind to the metaphysical difficulties. For 
Darwinism is, in fact, the scientific embodiment of that 
attack upon final causes which was already explicitly 
set forth by Spinoza, and which animated some of 
Hume's keenest logic. The eye and the ear are no 
longer to be regarded as illustrating the cunning 
workmanship of the Divine artificer, but as particular 
results of the uniform operation of what are called the 
laws of nature. Instead of saying, He that made the 
eye, shall he not see ? we confine ourselves to remarking 
that the development of eyes is part of the great process 
of the adaptation of the organism to its medium. In 
attacking this popular theology, with its inevitable 
anthropomorphism, Darwinism, it may be said, merely 
destroys the conceptions which have been abandoned 
by the most philosophical theists. The ' God intoxi- 
cated ' Spinoza was as hostile to them as the most 
abandoned materialists. The question still remains 
which has always agitated the keenest speculators. 
The man of science refuses to see anything beyond the 
operation of invariable laws, whilst the theologian still 
urges that the laws imply a lawgiver, though forced 
to abandon the anthropomorphic conception of the 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 101 

Supreme Being. The all-wise and all-good ruler of 
the universe is hidden from our sight by an impene- 
trable veil, his wisdom and his goodness are not like 
ours, and his modes of operation transcend our narrow 
powers of thought. God is not an external ruler, a 
part of the series of phenomena, but in some mysterious 
way an all-pervading essence. It is often said, and I 
believe truly, that if you persist in following the 
theological argument to its legitimate conclusion, and 
refuse to blind your eyes by using the word e mystery ' 
where you ought to say e nonsense,' you cannot stop 
short of Spinozism, or, in other words, of identifying 
God with the universe. With such a theism, which may 
be called the most exalted form of theism, Darwinism 
is perfectly compatible. Whether God, so considered,be 
a fitting object of our love and reverence, or too vague 
an object to attract human emotion, is undoubtedly a 
most important question, and it is one to which 
Darwinism has no direct relation. The difficulties 
which Darwinism opposes to the less philosophical 
doctrine are merely correlative to those which hamper 
any theory which first assumes an infinite and omni- 
potent being, and then tries to set limits to his action 
and his power. The doctrine of final causes, in fact, 
implies contrivance, and therefore a limitation of the 
divine energy, by conditions imposed from without; 
and thus in refusing to recognise an adaptation of 
means to ends, comprehensible to man, in the progressive 
changes of an organism, Darwin is at one with Spinoza. 



102 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

There is, however, another doctrine which is sup- 
posed to be more nearly affected ; and probably, though 
we seldom give open expression to our fears, it is 
this tendency which is really the animating cause 
of the alarm which is obviously felt. Does not the 
new theory make it difficult to believe in immortal 
souls ? If we admit that the difference between men 
and monkeys is merely a difference of degree, can we 
continue to hold that monkeys will disappear at their 
death like a bubble, and that men will rise from their 
ashes ? So vast a difference in the ultimate fate and 
the intrinsic nature of the two links should surely 
correspond to a wide gap in the chain. We are too 
proud to admit a gorilla or a chimpanzee to a future 
world, and yet, if they are only lower forms of 
humanity, we do not quite see our way to exclude 
them. The difficulty in one shape or another has long 
been felt. e Nobody thinks,' says Voltaire, e of giving 
an immortal soul to a flea ; why should you give one 
any the more to an elephant, or a monkey, or my 
Champagne valet, or a village steward, who has a 
trifle more instinct than my valet ? ' The difficulty of 
drawing the line is enhanced to the imagination when 
we assume that the flea is the remote ancestor of the 
village steward, and believe that one has melted by 
imperceptible degrees into the other. The orthodox 
may be excused for trembling when they see that 
central article of their faith assailed, and are in danger 
■of being deprived of the great consolations of their 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 103 

religion — Heaven and hell. This much may certainly 
be said for their comfort : Whatever reasons may be 
drawn from our consciousness for the belief that man 
is not merely a cunning bit of chemistry — a product of 
so much oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon — must remain 
in full force. We may doubt how far the belief ever 
rested on metaphysical arguments, and, indeed, it seems 
to be the orthodox opinion that it must be accepted on 
the strength of revelation. It would therefore only be 
affected so far as Darwinism and the methods to which 
it gives rise tend to explain the origin and growth of a 
faith to which all believers cling so fondly. And, what- 
ever the result may be, it is at least natural to suppose 
that it would rather tend to modify than to destroy 
the belief, to set bounds to the dogmatic confidence 
with which we have ventured to define the nature of 
the soul, than to uproot our belief in its existence. 
After all, it would not be a very terrible result if we 
should be driven to the conclusion that some kind of 
rudimentary soul may be found even in the lower 
animals. The c Spectator,' which, in spite of its tremu- 
lous flirtations with the infidel, is a reasonably ortho- 
dox journal, has lately been asking whether we have 
any excuse for refusing immortality to well-conducted 
cats, or to that admirable and fortunately authentic 
dog which watched for ten years upon its master's 
grave. Poor beast ! we should be willing to hope 
that he has found admission to the equal sky ; but 
without jesting on so awful a subject, or venturing 



104 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

into mysteries where the boldest metaphysician walks 
with uncertain tread, there is so far no obvious reason 
why our new conceptions of the facts — assuming that 
they establish themselves — should not be accommodated 
to the old belief. The purely metaphysical argument, 
whatever its value, and I admit that the value does not 
seem to be very great, remains untouched. 

There is, however, one other thing to be said, and it 
may as well be said plainly. After all, why is the belief 
in a personal immortality supposed to be so essential to 
the happiness of mankind ? It is not because we, as 
virtuous people, think it necessary that a place should 
be provided where the virtuous may receive an inter- 
minable pension for their good deeds, and the bad be 
tormented to the end of time. Some people, it is true, 
still ask for a kind of penal settlement in another world, 
in order to save our police rates in this. But that 
doctrine, both from its faults and its merits is fast ex- 
piring. It is too far intelligible and downright for our 
squeamish digestions, as it must be confessed that its 
tendency is not invariably elevating. It may convert 
religion into a specially clever form of selfishness, and 
take the grace out of the Christian character. The 
persons who call themselves Spiritualists in the present 
day sometimes claim to be providing an excellent sub- 
stitute for our old superstitions. They really show how 
a belief in another life may be twisted into the service 
of a most m-oveUine: form of materialism. Revolting 
as the old beliefs in hell may appear to be, they may 





DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 105 

also be cited for another purpose. Men are virtuous, 
it is sometimes said, because they believe in hell. Is 
not this an inversion of the proper order of thought ? 
Should we not rather say that men have believed in 
hell because they were virtuous ? There has been so 
general a belief that vice was degrading, and was to be 
discouraged by the strongest possible motives, that even 
the semi-barbarous part of mankind have exhausted 
their fancy in devising the most elaborate torments to 
express the horror with which they regarded it. It is 
painful to dwell upon the pictures of hideous anguish 
which the perturbed imaginations of past generations 
have conjured up and regarded as the penalties which 
the merciful Creator had in store for imperfect creatures 
placed in a state where their imperfections could not fail 
to lead them into error ; but there is this much of com- 
fort about it, that at least those ghastly images were the 
reflections of the horror with which all that was best in 
them revolted against moral evil. It is needless to 
say how easily those conceptions might be turned to 
the worst purposes, and religion itself be made an 
instrument not only for restraining the intellects, but 
for lowering the consciences of mankind. For our 
present purpose, it is enough to remark that a similar 
reflection may convince us that, whatever changes of 
opinion may be in store for us, we need not fear that 
any scientific conclusions can permanently lower our 
views of man's duty here. The belief in immortality, 
diffused throughout the world, is not, more than any 



106 FREETIIINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

other belief, valuable simply on its own account. It 
is valuable in so far as it has enabled men to rise above 
the selfishness and the sensuality which otherwise 
threatened to choke the higher impulses of our nature. 
But it was the existence of those impulses which gave 
it its strength, and not any of the metaphysical argu- 
ments which can only appeal to a very few exceptional 
minds. 

The ordinary argument upon this point seems to 
overlook a very obvious consideration. Excellent 
persons cling to the sanctions of another world as the 
only safeguard of morality. Their doctrine might be 
perfectly sound if those sanctions came from without, 
or were discovered by a process of reasoning. If it 
were a historical fact that the Almighty had proclaimed 
from Sinai the existence of heaven and hell, and that 
such a proclamation had been the cause of the belief, 
we might hold that men had been frightened into 
virtue by external means. Or if, again, we supposed 
that savages had read Butler's c Analogy,' and had 
been convinced by his arguments that this world was a 
state of probation, we might infer that the fear of hell 
was the cause of morality. But once assume that the 
belief has been spontaneously generated from within 
and the whole argument disappears. Give up super- 
natural interference, and man must be credited with the 
possession of virtuous instincts which gave the colour- 
ing to his theology. If our nature is essentially 
corrupt, it is consistent to believe that the scourge of 



DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 107 

hell-fire alone keeps us in order; but if man is not only 
the sufferer, but the inventor and wielder of the scourge, 
we must give up the dogma of corruption. If anyone 
chooses to say, I would sin but for my fear of hell, there 
is no arguing with him personally ; but, accepting the 
scientific view, and therefore interrogating experience 
for what men have actually done, instead of interro- 
gating our inner consciousness to find out what they 
should consistently do, we inevitably accept the con- 
clusion that the virtuous instincts are the foundation, 
not the outgrowth, of the belief, and may therefore be 
expected to survive its destruction or transformation. 

The ordinary remark is that such arguments apply 
only to the intelligent part of mankind, and that the 
brute multitude requires the coarse old stimulants. 
If by this it is meant that at certain stages of civilisa- 
tion the belief is natural and necessary, nobody would 
think of denying it. It is merely saying that a belief 
so widely diffused is inevitable under certain conditions. 
If it is meant to imply that, in all times and under all 
circumstances, men must be kept in order by the 
threats of supernatural vengeance which awed the 
infancy of the race, the doctrine appears to me to be 
at once unscientific and immoral. It is immoral 
because in one shape or another it comes to saying that 
we must lie to maintain virtue, that we must profess 
ourselves convinced of a theory which cannot be 
proved in order to deceive the ignorant masses. It is 
unscientific because it is contradicted by facts. Was 



108 FREETHINKING AND PL AINSPE AXING. 

not the Jewish religion stamped into the fibre of the 
toughest of races without any definite reference to 
another world ? Do we not find every day that the 
sanction of public opinion is so powerful as to enforce 
many practices in the very teeth of the supernatural 
sanctions ? So far from hell supplying the most power- 
ful of motives, we may say, as Bacon said of the fear of 
death, that there is no motive which is not able to 
overcome it. Why then should it be represented as 
affording the only leverage capable of making men 
virtuous? If, indeed, Darwinism is interpreted as 
simply striking out one fragment of the popular creed 
and leaving the rest standing, the argument may be 
granted. Expunge all reference to hell from Chris- 
tianity and the mutilated system may be inefficacious. 
But transform the whole theory consistently, and what 
is lost in one direction may be gained in another ; and 
the beliefs to which we owe the sanctions of another 
world are malleable enough to take many different 
forms. 

Religions thrive by a kind of natural selection ; 
those which provide expression for our deepest 
feelings crush out their rivals, not those which are 
inferred by a process of abstract reasoning. To be 
permanent, they must bear the test of reason; but they 
do not owe to it their capacity for attracting the hearts 
of men. The inference, therefore, from the univer- 
sality of any creed is not that it is true, for that would 
prove Buddhism or Mahommedanism as well as Chris- 






DARWINISM AND DIVINITY. 109 

tianity; but that it satisfies more or less completely 
the spiritual needs of its believers. And, therefore, 
we may be certain that, if the various tendencies which 
we have summed up in the name of Darwinism should 
ultimately become triumphant, they must find some 
means, though it is given to nobody as yet to define 
them, of reconciling those instincts of which the belief 
in immortality was a product. The form may change 
— we cannot say how widely — but the essence, as 
every progress in the scientific study of religions goes 
to show, must be indestructible. When a new doctrine 
cuts away some of our old dogmas, we fancy that it 
must destroy the vital beliefs to which they served as- 
scaffolding. Doubtless it has that effect for a time in 
those minds with whom the association has become 
indissoluble. That is the penalty we pay for pro- 
gress. But we may be sure that it will not take 
root till in some shape or other it has provided the 
necessary envelopes for the deepest instincts of our 
nature. If Darwinism demonstrates that men have 
been evolved out of brutes, the religion which takes it 
into account will also have to help men to bear in 
mind that they are now different from brutes. 



110 



CHAPTER IV. 

ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 

Are we still Christians ? is the question recently pro- 
pounded by Strauss. The answer which he gives has 
startled Mr. Gladstone into a pathetic appeal to the 
schoolboys of Liverpool. The Premier advises the 
youth of England to rest content with the decisions 
pronounced some centuries ago by the Council of Nice. 
The advice is amiable, if perhaps a little singular from 
the leader of the party of progress, and let us hope 
that it will bring peace to the schoolboy mind. Re- 
garded from the point of view of pure logic, such a 
reply can scarcely be considered effective as against 
Strauss and modern criticism. Strauss, indeed, is not 
writing for schoolboys. The e we * of whom he speaks 
belong to the class — a class, he adds, no longer to be 
counted by thousands — to whom the old faith and the 
old Church can no longer offer a weatherproof refuge. 
The majority even of this class would be content to 
lop off the decayed bough, trusting that there is yet 
vital power in the trunk. But there is a minority, and 
it is in their name that Strauss speaks, who think that, 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? Ill 

in giving up the old supernaturalisin, they must also 
take final leave of the worship to which it alone could 
give enduring power over the souls of men. Taking 
the e we ' in this limited sense, there can be but one 
answer to the question. That answer is given by- 
Strauss in the most unequivocal terms, and at times 
with some unnecessary asperity. Passing in review 
the most essential articles of the Christian creed, and 
the practices founded upon them, Strauss declares that 
for e us ' they can have no meaning. The attempts to 
effect a compromise between Christianity and .Rational- 
ism are nothing but a lamentable waste of human in- 
genuity. And thus he replies to his own question : 
emphatically, no. To be a Christian, a modern thinker 
must be dull or dishonest ; he must palter with his own 
convictions, or with the world. e We,' if we would be 
true to ourselves or to mankind, must abandon our 
ancient dwelling-place. Let us shake the dust off our 
feet, and taking reason for our guide, and Mr. Darwin 
for the best modern expounder of the universe, go 
boldly forwards to whatever may be in store for us. 

That such a question should be so put, and so 
answered, is clearly a noteworthy phenomenon even to 
men who are not perorating to schoolboys. That 
Strauss speaks in the name of a numerous and an 
intellectually powerful class is undeniable. Whether, 
in fact, a love of truth bids us abandon all those beliefs 
which alone rendered the world beautiful or even toler- 
able to the good and to the wise of former generations, 



112 FREETHINKING AND PLA1NSPEAKING. 

is one of the most important questions that can be 
asked, and one, it need not be said, infinitely too wide 
to be considered here. Another analogous question is 
suggested by Strauss's inquiry. What of the vast 
e we ' who lie outside the little band of true believers ; 
the e we ' upon whom the sun of science has not arisen, 
and who lie in the dim twilight, or even in the tenfold 
shades of night cast by the ancient superstitions not 
yet dispersed by its rays ? It is long, as Mr. Tenny- 
son tells, before the morning 

' creeping down, 
Flood with full daylight glebe and to\rn .' 

The mountain-tops may be glowing, but centuries may 
pass before the valleys partake of that brilliant illu- 
mination. The ordinary phrases about the development 
of thought refer only to a select few. It is but a 
numerically insignificant minority which has broken 
the old chains, and seen through the old fallacies. The 
emancipation of masses at the other extremity of the 
social scale, if it is to be called emancipation, is of a 
purely negative character. The thinking class is 
analogous to the brain of Hobbes's Leviathan; but 
the analogy must be made to fit, by assuming that 
Leviathan resembles some monstrous whale, in whom 
the propagation of impulses from the brain to the ex- 
tremities takes a perceptible time, arid whose organisa- 
tion includes a number of subsidiary ganglia which can 
imperfectly discharge the cerebral functions. When 
a living idea no longer dominates the brain, the ex- 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 113 

tremities are the first to feel the loss of its vital power. 
The intermediate parts of the body continue to work 
in the old fashion by a sort of blind spontaneity which 
yet lingers in the secondary organs. When a Church 
loses its hold on the intellectual classes, it can no longer 
maintain its sway over the s proletariate ; ' but the great 
bulk of the nation continues to think or to fancy it 
thinks in the old formulas, though conscious that a 
strange numbness is creeping over its faculties. What, 
then, is the state of mind of that great bulk of English- 
men who have neither listened to Strauss nor to Mr. 
Bradlaugh ; who have neither positively revolted nor 
unconsciously fallen away ; whose intellects are not 
active enough to care for scientific impulse, and yet too 
active to be content with a pure absence of ideas ? 
Assuming for the moment that Strauss speaks truly as 
to his own e we,' what of the next of the concentric 
social circles ? 

As the new doctrines filter downwards, they exercise 
a strange and, it almost seems, a capricious effect upon 
the lower strata of belief. Here and there old creeds 
are dissolved, leaving incoherent fragments behind 
them. Sometimes the destruction of later incrustations 
of doctrines only brings to light ancient forms of super- 
stition, which we supposed to have vanished long ago 
from the world. The ancient gods of the heathen sur- 
vived, as we know, to become the devils of Christian 
nations. Beliefs, instead of being abandoned, are 
transformed, and adapt themselves by slight modifica- 



114 FREETIIINKING AND PLAINSPEAEING. 

tions to tlie new atmosphere. Half understood frag- 
ments of the new theories work strange havoc with the 
older systems of thought. Ignorant people, it may be, 
see only the destructive side of rationalist teaching, and 
with their belief in the old sanctions lose their belief 
in the permanence of all morality. Or, taking fright 
at the prospect before them, they plunge back into the 
ancient superstitions. Or, catching at the scientific 
jargon, they dress up new idols, whose worship, in some 
cases, is not less degrading than that of their prede- 
cessors. And thus we have a blundering system of 
chaotic beliefs, of which it is difficult to render any co- 
herent account, or to detect the animating principle. 
Strauss we know, and Dr. Newman we know ; but 
what of all these singular phantoms which are moving, 
and to all appearance living, in the world ? Which 
doctrines are mere shadowy ghosts, and which have 
some solid core of genuine belief ? When a man boasts 
of his implicit faith, is he really avowing utter scepti- 
cism or profound conviction ? The old method of 
arguing from creeds to genuine beliefs, from what men 
say to what they think, has become a mere byeword. 
Were it applicable we should have to suppose that some 
people still believe the Athanasian Creed. If we could 
conceive the old formulae to be suddenly blotted out of 
existence, and men to endeavour to express their creeds 
in the simplest words that occurred to them, we should 
have a strange substitute for the Thirty-nine Articles. 
Cross-examine the simple-minded believer, and you 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? ,115 

-will find him quite unconsciously avowing the most 
startling heresies. In spite of the rash assertions of 
metaphysicians, mutually contradictory propositions 
lie side by side in his mind in perfect harmony. Per- 
haps he will seldom assert blankly that A is at once B 
and not B ; but if those statements be a little disguised, 
he will produce them alternately, or even simulta- 
neously, with the utmost complacency. He has no 
trouble in holding the premisses of a syllogism, and 
denying its conclusion; and still less in asserting a 
general proposition whilst denying every particular 
statement that it includes. What — to take an obvious 
example — is commoner than to find a zealot who vigo- 
rously asserts a belief in hell, and is yet shocked at the 
opinion that anybody will be damned? A place of 
eternal torture eternally untenanted seems to be no 
very useful article of faith, and yet it is perhaps the 
nearest expression of the ordinary opinion on the sub- 
ject. The statement, indeed, must be made with diffi- 
dence, for to discover by any direct inquiry what people 
really think on that most tremendous subject is one of 
the most hopeless of tasks. 

Indeed it may be said, with little exaggeration, not 
only that there is no article in the creeds which may 
not be contradicted with impunity, but that there is 
none which may not be contradicted in a sermon calcu- 
lated to win the reputation of orthodoxy, and be re- 
garded as a judicious bid for a bishopric. The popular 
.state of mind seems to be typified in the well-known 

i 2 



116 FEEETHINK1NG AND PLAINSPJEAK1NG. 

anecdote of the cautious churchwarden, who, whilst 
commending the general tendency of his incumbent's 
sermon, felt bound to hazard a protest upon one point. 
* You see, sir,' as he apologetically explained, ' I think 
there be a God.' He thought it an error of taste, or 
perhaps of judgment, to hint a doubt as to the first 
article of the creed. Undoubtedly, any one who should 
say in plain terms ' I am an Atheist,' would be in 
danger, not indeed of persecution, but of some social 
inconvenience. He would be wanting in good manners,, 
though not a criminal. For is it not a wanton insult 
to our neighbours to contradict their harmless pre- 
judices, when we can so easily reduce them to a mere 
verbal difference ? What else is the good of meta- 
physics ? Is it not the art of identifying ' is ' and e is 
not,' and of repelling the profane vulgar by the terrors 
of a mysterious jargon, whilst you propound what views 
you please to esoteric disciples ? May you not say, in 
language strong enough to satisfy a Positivist, that the 
human mind can form no conception of Divinity ; that 
good and merciful, applied to the Almighty, mean no 
more than wrathful and jealous, or even than epithets 
implying corporeal attributes, and say it all amidst 
general applause so long as your assault is ostensibly 
directed against the presumptuous Deist, and not against 
Moses or St. Paul ? A grateful clergy will applaud 
you for wielding weapons so unfamiliar to them, and 
so steadily associated with the adversary, and will take 
your word for it that you mean well. To repudiate 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 117 

Christianity in express terms would, of course, be in- 
admissible for a sound divine ; but dexterously soften 
away the old doctrines, explain that there is a divine 
element in all men as well as in Christ, interpret the 
true meaning of his mission upon earth, and the means 
of salvation for fallen man in terms of modern philo- 
sophy instead of the old theological phraseology, and 
nothing is easier than to show, and to win the credit of 
a pious motive for showing, that the one central event 
round which, as old believers thought, the whole uni- 
verse revolved, is nothing but an ancient legend, more 
touching perhaps, but not more vitally important to 
human beings, than the death of Socrates. 

But why insist on facts so notorious ? Do not all 
sections of Churchmen lament or exult over the mar- 
vellous elasticity of the ancient formulas ? In truth, 
shifts of this kind are scarcely adapted for the vulgar. 
They belong rather to the outward circle of Strauss's 
* we ; ' to those who live in the penumbra, not in the 
outer darkness ; who fancy that they can allow the 
decayed branches to fall of themselves, without laying 
the axe to the root of the tree. Plainer minds are 
perplexed by such manifestations, and cannot put up 
with a creed where, for the old formula, * I believe,' 
they are requested to read, ' I am on the whole inclined 
to believe,' or to say more positively, e I firmly believe 
in a general stream of tendency.' They want some 
more tangible grip of substantial realities, not these 
shadowy phantoms of opinion, changeable and bodiless 



118 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

as a morning mist. To discover the belief of the half- 
educated, which includes ninety-nine in a hundred of 
the so-called educated classes, we must not look to 
sermons — if, indeed, sermons reveal to us anybody's 
belief, and not rather blind gropings after something 
that will serve as a stop-gap for belief. Even those 
popular preachings which are modelled to suit the 
popular taste, fail to give us any very trustworthy 
indications. They are sometimes seasoned more highly 
to suit a decaying palate. Shall we look then to those 
popular platitudes which bring down the applauses of 
crowded audiences, and sell cheap newspapers by the 
hundred thousand? From them we may learn, for 
example, that the British workman will not have the 
Bible excluded from his schools, and will not have 
the Sunday desecrated. Certainly these are two of 
the most definite points in the popular creed. Our 
reverence for the Bible is, as Dr. Newman tells us, 
the strong point of Protestantism; and our observance 
of Sunday is the one fact which tells a foreigner that 
we have a religious faith. No one, whatever his 
opinions, should undervalue those beliefs, or, if they 
must so be called, superstitions. An English Sunday, 
with all its gloom and with all its drunkenness, is a 
proof that we do in fact worship something besides our 
stomachs. Familiarity with the Bible, slavish and 
dull as is our reverence for the letter, affords almost 
the only means by which the imagination of the people 
is cultivated, and some dim perception maintained of a 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 119 

divine meaning in the universe. But then these two 
sentiments clo not make a creed. Sunday is cherished 
by those who never enter a church, and the Bible may 
be a symbol of every creed that has existed in Europe 
for eighteen hundred years. Inquiring a little further, 
we probably come upon the statement that the people 
of England believe in unsectarian Christianity. There 
is a whole armoury of popular platitudes used to 
stimulate our enthusiasm in this noble cause. Plat- 
forms ring with its praises, and articles are published 
about it on Good Friday, which, if sincere — as we 
must hope they are — should have melted their authors 
to tears. 

If we brutally put such statements to the torture, 
and persist in crushing them in a logical mill, they can 
have but one meaning. They simply amount to scep- 
ticism in a gushing instead of a cynical form. Unsec- 
tarian Christianity can no more exist than there can 
be a triangle which is neither scalene nor isosceles nor 
equilateral. All Christians might conceivably be con- 
verted to one sect ; but if you strip off from the common 
creed all the matters which are in dispute between 
them, the residuum is at most the old-fashioned deism, 
if, indeed, it amounts to that. Nor is this mere logic- 
chopping. The more we look into the question, the 
plainer is the answer. Christianity, as it is understood 
by ultramontanes or by ultra-Protestants, implies a 
body of beliefs of unspeakable importance to the world. 
They may be true or they may be false, but they 



120 FREETHINK1NG AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

cannot be set aside as perfectly indifferent. Man is 
or is not placed here for a brief interval, which is to 
decide his happiness or his misery throughout all eter- 
nity. His situation does or does not depend upon his 
allegiance to the Church, or upon his undergoing a 
certain spiritual change. Christ came or did not come 
from God, and died or did not die to reconcile man to 
his Maker. An infidel is a man who accepts the 
negative of those propositions ; a Christian is one who 
takes the affirmative ; an unsectarian Christian, if he 
has any belief at all, is one who says that they may or 
may not be true, and that it does not much matter. 
If that is a roundabout way of expressing agreement 
with the infidel, the statement is intelligible, though 
its sincerity is questionable. But, taking it literally, 
it is surely the most incredible of all the assertions 
that a human being can possibly put forward. Can it 
possibly be a matter of indifference whether or not 
liell is gaping for me, and heaven opening its doors ? 
whether or not there is only one means provided by 
my Creator of escape from the dangers that environ 
us, and whether or not I avail myself of them? 
Dogmas, you say, matter nothing ; charity and purity 
are everything. But to say that such dogmas matter 
nothing is to imply that they are not true ; for the 
only alternative is the blasphemous proposition that 
God Almighty sent His Son upon earth to proclaim to 
His creatures the awful realities of their position ; to 
tell them how to escape His wrath and how to do His 






ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 121 

will ; and that, for all practical purposes, He might as 
well have let it alone. The dogmas are true, or they 
are immoral; for they tend to alter radically our 
whole conception of the world and of our position in 
it. They give us the chart by which to direct our 
course over the mysterious ocean to the unknown 
shore. It cannot be a matter of indifference whether 
the dangers which they indicate, and the harbour to 
which they would direct us, have or have not a real 
existence. 

It is out of place, it may be urged, to apply serious 
reasoning to such vague aspirations. Rather let us 
admit that, flimsy as is the popular rhetoric, disgusting 
to all w T ho ask for grain instead of chaff as is the 
unctuous sentimentalism in which it wraps itself, it 
contains a sort of meaning not devoid of value. By 
Christianity, in such phrases, is chiefly meant, so far 
as can be guessed, a few maxims from the Sermon on 
the Mount. The sturdy old Scotchwoman who com- 
plained of the e cauld morality ' of that document, had 
still a theology; but her sentiments are thoroughly 
out of fashion. The ordinary mind is rather shocked 
than otherwise by the statement that our faith means 
anything more than a command to do to others as we 
would that they should do to us ; accompanied by a be- 
lief that the character of Christ is a perfect embodiment 
of the virtues of benevolence and humility. The creed 
is a simple one, and not a bad one as far as it goes. 
Some exceptions might be taken to the type of character 



122 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

which it is calculated to develope. People who use 
the phrase have a peculiar Manichseism of their own. 
The evil principle is represented by Malthus, working 
by the c inexorable laws ' of supply and demand ; and 
the good principle by spasmodic outbursts of e genial * 
sentimentalism. At one moment the poor are to be 
improved by allowing them to starve ; at another, by 
giving them plenty of plum-pudding and milk-punch 
at Christmas. But, be this as it may, the doctrine, 
turn it how you will, is essentially sceptical. It is 
Strauss translated into the popular tongue ; for it 
amounts to saying that the doctrines which were the 
very life-blood of the old creeds which once stirred 
men's hearts to flame, are to be respectfully and civilly 
shelved, and that morality can do very well without 
them. It is the product of intellectual indolence, 
though not of actual intellectual revolt. We have not 
the courage to say that the Christian doctrines are 
false, but we are lazy enough to treat them as irre- 
levant. We shut our eyes to the Christian theory of 
the universe, and fix them exclusively upon those 
moral precepts which are admittedly common to Bud- 
dhists and Mahomedans, to Stoics and to Positivists, 
though, it may be, most forcibly expressed by Christians. 
To proclaim unsectarian Christianity is, in circuitous 
language, to proclaim that Christianity is dead. The 
love of Christ, as representing the ideal perfection of 
human nature, may indeed be still a powerful motive, 
and powerful whatever the view which we take of 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 123 

Christ's character. The advocates of the doctrine in 
its more intellectual form represent this passion as the 
true essence of Christianity. They assert with obvious 
sincerity of conviction that it is the leverage by which 
alone the world can be moved. But, as they would 
themselves admit, this conception would be prepos- 
terous if, with Strauss, we regarded Christ as a mere 
human being. Our regard for Him might differ in 
degree, but would not differ in kind, from our regard 
for Socrates or for Pascal. It would be impossible to 
consider it as an overmastering and all-powerful in- 
fluence. The old dilemma would be inevitable ; he 
that loves not his brother whom he hath seen, how can 
he love Christ whom he hath not seen? A mind 
untouched by the agonies and wrongs which invest 
London hospitals and lanes with horror, could not be 
moved by the sufferings of a single individual, however 
holy, who died eighteen centuries ago. $0 ! the 
essence of the belief is the belief in the divinity of 
Christ. But accept that belief; think for a moment 
of all that it implies ; and you must admit that your 
Christianity becomes dogmatic in the highest degree. 
Our conception of the world and its meaning are more 
radically changed than our conceptions of the material 
universe when the sun instead of the earth became its 
centre. Every view of history, every theory of our 
duty, must be radically transformed by contact with 
that stupendous mystery. Whether you accept or 
reject the special tenets of the Athanasian Creed is an 



124 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. ' 

infinitesimal trifle. You are bound to assume that 
every religion which does not take this dogma into 
account is without true vital force. Infidels, heathens, 
and Unitarians reject the single influence which alone 
can mould our lives in conformity with the everlasting 
laws of the universe. Of course, there are tricks of 
logical sleight of hand by which the conclusion is 
evaded. It would be too long and too trifling to 
attempt to expose them. Unsectarian Christianity 
consists in shirking the difficulty without meeting it, 
and trying hard to believe that the passion can survive 
without its essential basis. It proclaims the love of 
Christ as our motive, whilst it declines to make up its 
mind whether Christ was God or man ; or endeavours 
to escape a categorical answer under a cloud of un- 
substantial rhetoric. But the difference between man 
and God is infinite ; and no effusion of superlatives 
will disguise the plain fact from honest minds. To be 
a Christian in any real sense, you must start from a 
dogma of the most tremendous kind, and an un- 
dogmatic creed is as senseless as a statue without shape 
or a picture without colour. Unsectarian means un- 
christian. 

Are we, then, to assume that with averted eyes and 
hesitating steps men are abandoning, or have already 
substantially abandoned, the old creeds, and quietly 
preserved the name whilst tacitly adding a neutralising 
epithet ? If some facts might be alleged in favour of 
that view, there are not wanting many which may be 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 125 

advanced on the opposite side. The preachers who 
lament over the progress of infidelity boast also of the 
revival which has passed over all creeds within the 
present century. The old trunk continues to put out 
fresh shoots. Churches have risen all over the land ; 
schools have been built ; priests are supported ; and the 
increase of the spiritual provision is overtaking the 
increase of the population. The cold breath of the 
eighteenth-century scepticism has passed away. Vol- 
taire has done his worst ; Darwinism and the other 
agencies of which Strauss speaks have destroyed the 
outworks instead of the citadel ; and the reconciliation 
of faith and reason, distant as it may still appear, is 
beginning dimly to shadow itself forth on the far 
horizon. Which is the main stream and which the 
eddy ? The great protest against the old dogmatism 
has liberated the intellect from obsolete fetters ; 
but may it not turn out that the intellect will itself 
frame laws substantially identical with the old? Some 
obvious deductions must indeed be made. Church- 
building is a very pretty amusement for rich men. 
There has been an immensely increased expenditure 
upon all kinds of luxury, and ecclesiastical luxury has 
of course increased with the rest. There is a taste for 
painted windows as there is a taste for Venetian 
glass ; and perhaps the tithe which rich men pay to 
religious purposes has not increased in proportion to 
their expenditure on purposes of a purely selfish kind. 
Antiquarianism has become a popular amusement. 



\ 



126 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

instead of being confined to a few. We have the 
South Kensington Museum, instead of the few petty 
collections of which Strawberry Hill was the most 
prominent example. We have built real churches, 
and put in them real priests in real vestments, instead 
of running up a few sham ruins like our respected 
grandfathers. The restoration, as we are pleased to 
call it, of a modern cathedral, provides some pleasant 
excitement for the surrounding nobility and gentry ; 
and the only misfortune is that our toy is too big to 
be put in a museum. And then, too, the expenditure 
on religious institutions is part of the insurance which 
we all have to pay against e blazing principles.' What 
with communists and members of the International, we 
are too much in the position of people sitting on a 
powder magazine to be quite comfortable. It pays 
from a purely commercial point of view to support 
the Establishment. We send out our ( black dragoons' 
into every parish, agents of social order, whose duty it 
is to assure agricultural peasants and others — first, 
that they are very comfortable ; secondly, that sub- 
mission is a Christian duty ; and finally, that they 
ought to set their affections on things above, and not 
upon houses and lands which belong to other people. 
The Christian religion, as some people seem to think, 
had an uncomfortable dash of socialism in its early 
ages, but has now become an excellent bulwark to the 
rights of property. It provides a harmless vent for a 
good deal of ugly enthusiasm; a dissenting hymn, 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 127 

aesthetically objectionable, is a much safer expression 
of sentiment than the Marseillaise; and the wild rant 
about hell fire is more convenient than allusions to 
the incendiary properties of petroleum. Indeed, we 
are sincere enough. "We have been to the brink of 
the volcano, and we did not like the glimpses we 
caught of the seething masses of inflammatory matter 
at the bottom. The effect was fairly to startle us 
back into any old creed which led to less disastrous 
results. The Pope, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
or even Mr. Spurgeon, are much more satisfactory 
guides than the prophets of the revolution, and we 
may willingly swallow a few dogmas in which we do 
not quite believe, to secure the alliance of powerful 
manifestations of popular impulses. Even Gibbon, 
when he saw the outbreak of the first French revolu- 
tion, became an admirer of the Church of England. 
To decide for how much motives of this kind may 
count in ih.Q general movement is of course impossible. 
Every strong current of feeling is derived from com- 
plex sources, and the base and selfish interests have 
their part in it as well as the noblest. Indeed, it 
would be absurd to stigmatise as essentially ignoble all 
that we call the purely reactionary or even the purely 
dilettante elements of the new-born zeal. Their 
existence is a proof how much remains to be done 
before the subversive school can satisfy men's imagina- 
tions and provide a bond capable of holding society 
together with its ancient solidity. It would be equally 



128 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

foolish and cynical, even in those who have most 
distinctly parted company with the old beliefs, to over 
look the generosity and the sincerity displayed by the 
loyal adherents of the dying cause. In that, as in all 
other movements which stir men's souls profoundly, 
there must undoubtedly be a groundwork of true 
faith and heroism. The difficulty is to decide how far 
the impulse comes from external contagion, and how 
far it is derived from the native and unexhausted forces 
of the ancient creeds. The flame of zeal lighted up by 
the heretics spreads also to their antagonists. When, 
from any causes, a vigorous stimulant is acting upon 
the world, a more rapid current of circulation is driven 
through the old channels as well as through the new. 
The phenomenon is by itself ambiguous. A stronger 
sense of the necessity of social revolutions may take 
the form of increased religious enthusiasm, though at 
bottom it may have little enough to do with renewed 
faith in the ancient dogmas. The same impulse may 
strengthen the hands both of the Positivist and of the 
Romish priest, and it can only be decided by experi- 
ment which provides the best expression for the new 
emotions that are stirring the foundations of society. 
That a creed may be permanent, it must satisfy the 
intellect; but the first impulse comes from the passions, 
and therefore a revival of belief may be due much 
more to a change in social conditions than to any 
process of logical conviction. 

Thus the problem of determining what are our 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 129 

genuine beliefs cannot be decided by simply counting 
congregations, or adding up subscription lists, any 
more than by a simple inspection of creeds. Some 
means must be discovered of testing the true signifi- 
cance of the evidence. Somewhere under all the mass 
of loud profession and ambiguous rhetoric there must 
be a genuine core of belief. If we probe deep enough 
and long enough, we must, or so we fancy, come in the 
end to something sound and solid. ISTo one but a 
practised metaphysician can succeed in balancing his 
mind for any length of time in an attitude of sceptical 
equilibrium. Few people, it is true, think coherently, 
or push their doubts home. They are in one state of 
mind on Sunday and in another on Monday; they 
have different religions for their shops and their 
domestic houses ; anol yet, chaotic as is the intellectual 
furniture of most minds, one may find in them some 
little stock of cherished opinion, or at least of preju- 
dice, which supplies a more or less solid standing 
ground. There have been periods at which one 
might say that a man believed what he would fight 
for ; but there are two difficulties in the way of apply- 
ing such a test now, namely, that we very seldom fight 
for anything ; and, still more, that when we do, we do 
not generally know for what we are fighting. An 
Irishman may fancy that he is fighting for the Pope, 
when he is really fighting from hatred of the Saxon, or 
from an abstract love of fighting for its own sake ; and 
a clergyman that he is fighting for the Athanasian 

K 



130 FREETHINK1NG AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

Creed, when he is really animated by a wholesome 
jealousy of Dissenters. The only available method 
would seem to be an indirect one. A living creed is 
distinguished from a dead creed by the fact — that it is 
constantly germinating and associating itself with all 
our modes of thought; and therefore one may some- 
times find out what a man believes, not by asking him 
point-blank, ( Will you subscribe to such or such an 
Article ? ' but by taking him unawares, and judging 
whether he keeps his dogma in a pigeon hole, to be 
exhibited on proper occasions, or applies it spon- 
taneously to any task in hand. 

Such a test, one might fancy, should have been 
discoverable in the singular controversy about prayer 
which has been recently breaking out at intervals. 
No one could follow it without a melancholy sense of 
the chaotic mass of beliefs and half-beliefs of which it 
seemed to indicate the existence. Millions of people, 
it appears, prostrate themselves daily before their 
Creator, and when they are asked what they mean by 
it, they can give no coherent reply. The main result 
seems to be that they consider it equally irreverent to 
expect a definite answer and not to expect a definite 
answer to their requests. The controversialists chose 
by preference to dwell upon that mere thrust-and- 
parry of metaphysical fence which is palpably beside 
the question. Science cannot deny and theology 
cannot affirm the efficacy of prayer upon purely a priori 
grounds. Independently of observation, a man of 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 131 

science may as easily believe that the laws of nature 
should determine rain to follow prayer, as that they 
should determine rain to follow a fall of the barometer. 
A theologian cannot assert independently of revelation 
that the Almighty will attend to our wishes about the 
weather any more than to our wishes about the motions 
of the planets. At bottom it is simply a question of 
fact, and that, indeed, was the meaning of the suffi- 
ciently offensive form in which the challenge was 
uttered. The men of science were repeating the 
taunt which Elijah aimed at the priests of Baal, ( Is 
your god asleep ? Is he an active agent in the govern- 
ment of the universe, or has he put it into commission 
to be carried on by the forms of material nature ? Is 
your belief confined to your dreams, or does it apply 
in the sphere of reality ? ' Undoubtedly, men who did 
not profess to share Elijah's commission were justified 
in refusing a test which carried with it an insult to the 
object of their worship. What man of piety, or who 
could even partially sympathise with pious customs, 
would consent to test the presence of the Almighty 
as he would test the existence of ozone in the atmo- 
sphere ? Is some method of spectrum analysis to be 
applicable to the omnipresent and omnipotent preserver 
of all things ? It was right and natural to appeal to 
wider experience, but it was right only on condition 
that the appeal was not a pretext for altogether 
evading the argument. For the scientific disputant 
had a right to ask in what sense Providence is to be 



132 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKINQ. 

regarded as governing the world. That central doc- 
trine of all theology must include a genuine and not a 
purely verbal proposition, if it is really to affect the 
lives of men. Unluckily, the answers revealed a 
curious vagueness and unwillingness to face facts. 
The real difficulty in believing in the efficacy of 
prayer in its old sense is generated as much by exalt- 
ing our ideas of the Creator as by denying our powers 
of conceiving Him. But the orthodox disputants 
seemed to be clinging to the belief that God was no 
more than an invisible but very powerful man ; and 
half-unconsciously trying to reconcile it with the 
loftier conception of an all-prevailing and all-deter- 
mining essence. One could not discover whether they 
believed in Jehovah or in the God of Spinoza. They 
took refuge in irrelevant metaphysics, and tried to 
prove — what nobody ever thought of denying — that 
God could change the weather if He pleased; or they 
sought to prove that, though it would be foolish to 
pray against an eclipse, it might be reasonable to pray 
for rain. One phenomenon is just as much the result 
of fixed causes as the other ; but it is easier for the 
imagination to suppose the interference of a divine 
agent to be hidden away somewhere amidst the infi- 
nitely complex play of forces which elude our calcula- 
tions in meteorological phenomena, than to believe in 
it where the forces are simple enough to admit of pre- 
diction. The distinction is of course invalid in a 
scientific sense. Almighty power can interfere as 



i ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 133 

easily with the events which are, as with those which 1 
are not, set down in the 6 Nautical Almanac.' One 
cannot suppose that God retreats as science advances, 
and that He spoke in thunder and lightning till 
Franklin unravelled the laws of their phenomena. 
But in the border-land between the unknowable and 
the provinces which have been accurately mapped 
out by science, the popular imagination may still 
conceive mysterious agencies to be at work ; and what 
cannot be demonstrated by observation not to exist 
may be taken as existing for purposes of edification. 
Yet how can such a theory be expressed in plain 
language without gross irreverence? A deity who 
shifts and changes and hides himself away, like the 
man in the automaton chess-player; who acts when our 
eyes are averted, and retires behind a screen of second 
causes when we contemplate facts directly; whom we 
solemnly implore to help us at need, whilst we carefully 
explain that the help comes from ourselves, is not a 
conception calculated to afford a firm centre for an 
operative religion. It is only natural that the popular 
view should oscillate by strange bounds from one 
extreme to the other. We applaud the common sense 
of the statesman who tells us that cholera is to be 
avoided by drainage, and not by prayer and fasting. 
We fall into emotional ecstasies when we are called 
upon to save a young man from fever by national 
supplication. If the loyalty was as genuine as the 
religious faith when all London was thronged by 



134 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

crowds acknowledging the answer to our prayers, what 
vital power must still reside in the British consti- 
tution ! 

At the foundation of this strange oscillation and 
uncertainty lies the difficulty of reconciling the old 
language to the loftier conception of the universe 
which is slowly dawning upon men's minds. When a 
Roman Catholic archbishop says, as he is reported to 
have done, that we have had too much rain, that it 
was sent as a punishment for our infidelity, and that it 
would be stopped at our request, we know not whether 
to wonder most at the scientific ignorance, or at the 
narrow conceptions of theology which are implied. 
The only safe conclusion is, that the object of the 
archbishop's worship is not the God adored by any 
intelligent theist. His motives and purposes, it seems, 
can be guessed and his plans changed more easily than 
those of Prince Bismarck. When we have any dis- 
tinct conception of the mode in which all the natural 
forces are bound up together, how any change propa- 
gates fresh changes through all time and space along 
the infinite chains of causes and effects, we feel how 
our power of asking must be limited by our utter 
ignorance of that for which we ask. A request for 
more rain — even a request for another loaf of bread — 
is a request for an infinite series of operations utterly 
beyond our knowledge. It is the old story : — 

1 Ye gods, annihilate but space and time, 
And make two lovers happy ! ' 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 135 

The insect asks that the pebble which obstructs its 
path may be removed ; and it really asks, though it 
knows it not, that mountains may be uprooted, and 
the climate of continents changed. Nor is a belief in 
the efficacy of prayer — understood in this sense — re- 
concilable with any lofty form of theism. What can a 
prayer from man to the Ruler of the universe express 
beyond a cry for relief and a confession of utter 
ignorance ? At a certain mental stage, religion 
means a belief in an invisible poor-law board which 
will give outdoor relief on application ; as at another 
period it means a belief, naively expressed by the 
amiable Tucker, who says that heaven is a super- 
natural bank, with the advantage that, unlike the 
Bank of England, it can never break, and it allows us 
an enormous rate of interest for any temporary sacri- 
fice of pleasure. The deeper the genuine sentiment 
of religion, the more impossible it is to retain such a 
conception. Is it necessary, then, that prayer should 
become meaningless when it ceases to be a draft pay- 
able at sight for so much comfort, as the school of 
Paley and Tucker taught that virtue would be mean- 
ingless unless justified by a prospect of future reward ? 
That is the tacit assumption of the orthodox, and the 
reason of their protest against the more scientific con- 
ception. Yet the belief that we can work a small 
miracle is surely not the essence of what is really 
ennobling in prayer. One of the old deists l says, not 

1 Peter Annet, the last of his race, and, in some sense, the con- 
necting link between Collins and Tom Paine, 



1^6 FEEETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

ungracefully, in the midst of some brutal remarks 
about Christianity, that men praying resemble sailors 
who have cast anchor on a rock, and who fancy that 
they are pulling the rock to them when they are 
really pulling themselves to the rock. Frankly to 
adopt that conception, and to accommodate our lan- 
guage to it, involves too great a breach with our old 
phraseology. And yet, if we adopted it, prayer might 
still be left as the utterance of the deepest emotions of 
which human nature is susceptible, and as the mode 
by which we may discipline our imaginations to sink 
our own selfish interests in wider sympathies, in nobler 
aspirations, and in a deeper sense of our close con- 
nection with the interests of the universe. Comte, as 
we know, valued prayer so highly that he endeavoured 
to maintain the practice, whilst denying altogether the 
possibility of addressing the Creator. He spent, it is 
said, an hour daily in prayer to a dead woman as the 
vivid symbol of humanity. Such a practice is, of 
course, utterly unintelligible on the view which makes 
prayer a request for a definite object, in the same 
sense as a beggar's address to a rich man. But the 
unwillingness to adopt any such substitute for the old 
practice so indissolubly associated with every feeling 1 
that has ennobled the first history of the world, seems 
to prove something more. Prayer, decisively purified 
from every trace of the beliefs in which it originated, 
does not at present, if it ever will, satisfy the imagina- 
tion. We must pray — so we reason— to raise our 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 137 

minds above material and selfish objects, and, to be" 
sufficiently impressive, prayer must recognise something 
behind the veil of the visible world. 

The ordinary mind, even whilst confessing its im- 
potence to pierce behind that veil, refuses to obey the 
Positivist advice, to abandon altogether its search for 
the absolute and the infinite. The horizon offered by 
this planet, and including only its inhabitants, seems 
to be too limited for our needs ; the walls of that 
prison-house are so close that we feel the atmosphere 
to be stifling. We are exhorted to renounce an 
empty search into the origin of life, and be content 
with the fact that we are living ; to cease to pry into 
the constitution of the stars, and to be satisfied with 
astronomical knowledge enough for purposes of navi- 
gation. And yet the growing curiosity with which 
such studies are pursued seems to reveal a dim sus- 
picion, not merely that apparently fruitless researches 
may lead to practically useful results, but that we may 
be following out the clue which will serve to answer 
the great enigma. The notion may be groundless ; 
and it may be that, after poring upon spectra, and 
tracing the development of plants and insects to the 
farthest limits of observation, we shall not have 
penetrated even by an infinitesimal degree below the 
surface to which we are inexorably confined. We 
may handle the veil as much as we please, but we 
cannot raise it. Go as far back as we please along 
the chain of causes and effects, we never discover the 



138 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

hand .that links them. And yet, though the old con^ 
ception of the watchmaker and of final causes is some- 
what decayed, we persist in believing that by tracing 
out a wider arc of the orbit, we are coming nearer to 
some dim perception of the overruling purpose which 
has started and which still guides the whole scheme of 
things. In Strauss's phraseology it would be said 
that, whilst abandoning the old theology, we are 
seeking to replace it by a consciousness of that vague 
entity which he describes as the All. Prayer, vaguely 
as we grasp the popular conception, seems to be a 
blind protest against the possibility of permanently 
imprisoning the intellect within the barriers of physical 
science. We cannot, in obedience to science, summarily 
quench those 

' obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things ' 

which still perplex the world's old age as they 
brightened its infancy. The 6 light of common day 
is too blank and dreary to satisfy our souls. In spite 
of all previous failures of philosophers and divines, we 
can no more resolve to abandon our dreams than to 
attribute to them an objective reality. The conflict 
between our aspirations and our genuine faith leads to 
many grotesque and to some degrading manifestations, 
but is, on the whole, far more pathetic than ludicrous. 
The question, however, remains, What effect does 
this indefinite state of mind produce upon our lives ? 
Does it entitle us to be called, in any intelligible sense, 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 139 

Christians? Does that inarticulate conviction give 
so firm a standing-ground as materially to affect our 
conduct, or is it merely retained because some sense of 
awful mystery is necessary to the imagination ? Are 
we like men whose guiding star has become indistinct 
and shadowy, but yet serves to direct their course ; or 
are we conscious of its light merely as a diffused glow, 
colouring the bare world with a magical harmony, but 
affording no indication to impel us in any definite 
direction ? If our hopes of immortality be unfounded, 
says St. Paul, then are we of all men the most miser- 
able. The statement is susceptible of an unpleasant 
interpretation; for it may easily be pressed into the 
service of people who hold that the only object of 
being virtuous is to win a pension in this world or the 
next ; but in a less literal sense it must be true of 
every revealed religion. What could be more cruel to 
the most unselfish hero than to find that his whole 
scheme of life had been laid out on a false hypothesis, 
and that he had been guiding his followers into the 
wilderness instead of the promised land ? To have 
erased from St. Paul's creed his faith in a future 
world, would have been to destroy the thread which 
alone held together the whole network of interwoven 
beliefs. It would at once have fallen into a hopelessly 
intricate tangle. The universe would have appeared 
to him as a blind jumble of incoherent forces. He 
would not have felt that his loss was confined simply to 
the weakening of one motive to virtue, but rather that 



340 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

his whole system of thought was, as it were, dislocated 
and paralysed. The belief in the life beyond the 
grave is in some creeds merely a beautiful and elevating 
but, in the strict sense, a superfluous corollary from 
the other doctrines. Its loss would be sensibly felt, 
but it would not change the practical lessons of life. 
In others it is the base, which cannot be removed with- 
out bringing down the whole superstructure in ruin. 
Which is the case with ourselves ? 

We may judge by trying to place ourselves for a 
moment in the position of men who really believe in 
some of the old doctrines now repeated so glibly, be- 
cause with so little meaning. To them the present 
world appears to be a scene of misery ; its pleasures are 
empty delusions ; to partake of them is to run the risk 
of sullying our souls, and he is best who yields least to 
the temptations of the senses. Marriage is not the 
natural state of man, but a concession to our baser 
passions, mercifully granted to avoid worse evils. 
The virgin life is the highest, and to mortify the flesh 
and wean ourselves from the world the only course 
that can entitle us to eternal rewards. We are 
sojourners here, and properly denizens of a purer abode 
from which we have been exiled for a time, and which 
the corruption of our natures prevents us from dis- 
tinctly viewing with our earthly vision. Our best 
hope is that the whole visible framework of the 
universe may be dissolved, and a new heaven and new 
earth be revealed to our wayworn souls. * If man be- 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 141 

fore he was born/ as Jeremy Taylor expresses the 
genuine sentiment, e knew what he was to suffer in his 
life, he would not be born at all : therefore Silenus, 
being demanded what was the greatest happiness man 
was capable of, said, " Not be born, or to die quickly." ' 
The spirit of man is clogged and debased by the vile 
clay with which it is mixed, and the whole purpose of 
the world is, by some supernatural chemistry, to extract 
the finer essence from the alloy into which it has been 
plunged. Such a doctrine is, of course, only tenable if 
the future life appears to be as real as the present, or, 
indeed, to have a more intense reality. In the lower 
forms of the creed, the belief is necessary, because other- 
wise we could never be repaid for the tortures which we 
have undergone ; it is equally necessary in the higher 
forms, because otherwise our whole activity has been 
directed to a chimerical aim. A lifelong and internecine 
struggle with the elements of which this life is com- 
posed, is nonsensical if this life be all, and our power ne- 
cessarily limited to making the best of the world as it is. 
The creed of the genuine ascetic, even where it is 
most vigorously entertained, does not, of course, 
produce a corresponding effect upon men's lives. The 
ties by which we are bound to the world and the flesh 
are infinitely too strong to be broken by any imagina- 
tive doctrine. Divines of all classes, Roman Catholic 
priests and Dissenting ministers, strain their powers to 
g;ive form and colouring to the scenes which are to 
terrify or to allure us. With eternity and infinite 



142 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

power to draw upon, it is their own fault if the picture 
be not sufficiently brilliant. 

' The weariest and most loathed worldly life 
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment 
Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
To what we fear of death.' 

For the fears have been stimulated by the simple 
process of taking all that is most horrible in this world, 
and conceiving it as multiplied in intensity and dura- 
tion till the imagination faints under the burden. The 
result does not correspond to the benevolent intentions 
of the artists, partly because the imagination is sluggish, 
and a tacit revolt is produced by too exorbitant drafts 
upon our powers of belief, and partly too because 
the artists themselves are compelled to devise modes 
of escape from the horrors which they have depicted. 
The power of the Church to remit the penalties, or of 
some change in the individual to avoid them, grows in 
proportion to the rigour of the penalties themselves, and 
the terms of escape are arranged in such a way as not 
to bear too hardly upon human weakness. All bad 
men, it is proclaimed, will be damned ; but we, it is 
whispered, possess the key to some convenient back- 
door which will enable you to slink into paradise 
without too great a sacrifice of your natural passions. 

It would be absurd, therefore, to measure the 
vitality of the creed by the degree in which it actually 
produces the effect at which it is ostensibly aimed.. 
The vilest licentiousness constantly exists in the very 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 143 

places where its consequences are believed, in all 
sincerity, to be most unspeakably momentous. Indeed, 
to condemn human nature as corrupt has a very strong 
tendency to increase the corruption of human nature. 
But wherever such a creed is powerful, the moral 
standard, though not the lives of the believers, will 
be altered. An ascetic religion will not produce a whole 
nation of ascetics, and it may at times exist in a whole 
nation of voluptuaries ; but it will show itself in the 
moral type which they admire. Their saints, real or 
imaginary, will be men who have issued from the world 
and its cares to cultivate the spiritual faculties. The 
criterion of virtue will not be the tendency of actions 
to improve this life, but their tendency to encourage 
indifference to temporal interests. Charity will be 
admirable, not in so far as it tends to eradicate 
poverty, but in so far as it imposes sacrifices upon 
the benevolent ; and a man will be admired if, without 
directly contributing to the happiness of others, he has 
deliberately made himself miserable during his earthly 
pilgrimage. 

What, then, is the ordinary creed of our modern 
society upon these points of morals ? Is the ascetic or 
the utilitarian code of morality most in harmony with 
our practice, or rather with our theories ? What type 
of virtue would an average Englishman or American 
most admire ?- — that which is embodied in an inmate of 
the Chartreuse, who slowly and silently tortures 
himself to death on the summit of a bleak mountain ; or 



144 FREETH1NKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

that which is embodied in a clergyman, with a wife and 
twelve children, good clothes and kitchen, and even a 
tolerable cellar of wine, who yet does his duty manfully, 
like the hard-working doctor or lawyer who lives next 
door, and who succeeds in diminishing drunkenness and 
in increasing the deposits in the savings bank of the 
neighbourhood ? If virtue is to be measured by the 
extent of the victory won over natural passions, the 
monk has of course an indefinite superiority ; if by the 
degree in which a man's activity is subservient to the 
welfare of his fellow-man, the balance inclines as de- 
cidedly in the opposite direction. The monk may be 
thoroughly and grossly selfish, for he may be calcu- 
lating on a tenfold repayment ; and the clergyman may 
have acted in every case upon the most chivalrous 
motives. His marriage may have been a great act of 
self-denial ; and he may sincerely hold even that the 
comfort in which he lives is necessary to fit his children 
to play their parts as refined and accomplished members 
of the class to which they belong. The ultimate motives 
are beyond our judgment ; but we may ask which type 
of humanity is most likely to flourish in the soil of 
modern society ? Nor can the answer be for a moment 
doubtful. Those who hate most and those who most 
admire the tendencies summed up in what we call pro- 
gress are pretty well agreed as to some of the cha- 
racteristics implied. An observer, for example, like 
Tocqueville is never tired of writing upon the passion 
for material well-being, which, according to him, 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 145 

is the distinguishing mark of modern democracy. To 
fit people for this world rather than for the next 
seems to be the sole object of modern philanthropists 
and statesmen. If we wish to denounce the dominant 
tendencies of the age, we call them materialising, 
and argue that Christianity is more than ever neces- 
sary to save us from the grovelling worship of the 
almighty dollar. If we approve of them, we urge 
that a religion which confines itself to condemning the 
world cannot really leaven it with higher influences. 
The heat of pious enthusiasm which, under the old 
forms of belief, radiated into the void of infinite space, 
must be retained within our atmosphere to give light 
and warmth on earth. Religion, to retain its vitality, 
must sanctify the ordinary passions of men, and not 
fruitlessly aim at their extirpation. Can the motives 
provided by Christianity receive this application ? That 
was no doubt the opinion of the benevolent persons 
who, some years ago, invented the name of Christian 
socialism ; and it is implied in the various attempts of 
the Church of Rome to form an alliance between the 
priests and the populace. Why should not Christianity, 
as of old, be the great force for the upheaval of society ? 
Is not the alliance between the Church and the ancient 
political framework merely a temporary accident ; and 
may not the principles of Christian morality be repre- 
sented as identical with those of a modern radical ? 
The revolutionists, who repudiated the old faith along 
with the old rulers, were perhaps rejecting the force 

L 



146 FREETHINK1NG AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

which could alone have given them the necessary 
consistency for winning a final victory. The intellectual 
difficulties which have alienated the class represented 
by Strauss's e we/ have little significance for the lowest 
social stratum. A New York Irishman or a Belgian 
peasant is not much affected by the results of historical 
criticism and scientific discovery. Why then should 
there be any mutual repulsion between the modern 
democrats and those who boast of a succession from 
the ancient fishermen of Galilee ? The founder of our 
religion was called the firstsans culotte; and passing over 
the irreverence of the phrase, it expressed an important 
analogy. The sentiments to which the early Christians 
appealed were in many respects the same as those to 
which our modern socialists owe their strength. 

The most fundamental difficulty in the way of such an 
alliance lies in the difference of the remedy suggested. 
The doctrine of the early Christians proceeded from 
men who renounced the world as the scene of a brutal 
tyranny, but looked for safety to passive submission, 
instead of active revolt. They accepted poverty and 
suffering as inevitable, and sought for a refuge in the 
hopes of another world, or of a millennium to be 
brought about by miraculous agencies. The modern 
socialist aspires to conquer the world, instead of with- 
drawing from it, and would extirpate rather than 
idealise poverty. His millennium is to be won by his 
own efforts, and he contemplates entrance into Utopia 
instead of heaven. The promised land to which he 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 147 

looks forward is not an eternity of happiness, where he 
will be freed from the body and its cares, but an inde- 
finite vista of material and social progress. He will 
not walk with saints and angels, and sing hymns of 
praise to his Creator throughout all ages ; but he anti- 
cipates a time when capital will be the servant instead 
of the master of labour ; when every man will have a 
fair day's wages for a fair day's work ; when intelligent 
co-operation will be substituted for blind competition, 
and the crushing burden of poverty which now bends 
him to the earth will be finally removed. The vision 
is less splendid, for he has no longer an unbounded 
field for his imagination ; but it is more tangible. It 
must be gained, not by prayer and fasting, but by the 
sweat of his brow, and it must be the reward of the 
industrial and not of the ascetic virtues. A belief in 
immortality is not incompatible with such a view of 
man's destiny and purposes ; nay, it is easy to maintain 
that it is essential in order to balance the materialising 
tendencies of the doctrine ; but the hope of immortality 
expresses a different set of sentiments. To a Christian 
of the old type the vision of heaven and hell must be 
as vivid as possible, in order to express his abhorrence 
of the existing order. There must be some place where 
Lazarus could be made equal with Dives ; for in this 
world he could only look forward to a life of hopeless 
bondage. But when Lazarus expects to compel Dives 
to share his wealth with his humbler brethren, a change 
comes over the spirit of his dream. He conceives of 



148 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

the next life, so far as he cares to conceive of it at all, 
rather as a prolongation of this than as a contrast to it. 
He cannot bear to think that all the kindly affections 
which run so cruelly to waste in this world— the love 
for the dead who have been taken from us, the noble 
aspirations that never meet with any adequate fulfilment 
— should he entirely dispersed without any adequate 
satisfaction. But he has a strong enough hope of good 
being ultimately realised here not to feel the necessity 
of a heaven to make the thought of the universe endur- 
able. In spite of his discontent with the existing order 
of things, he is on the whole in too good humour with 
himself and the world to feel any great need of a hell. 
When brutal tyranny is no longer definitely trium- 
phant, he does not wish to punish his oppressors with 
eternal torments. Progress, though a vague enough 
word, means the hope that things will somehow right 
themselves on earth in the course of time ; and it is no 
longer necessary to throw out the present misery of the 
good and the past happiness of the wicked against a 
background in which their future positions may be re- 
versed. The hope of immortality, therefore, is accept- 
able in so far as it seems to give a loftier view of 
human nature, but does not materially modify the 
character of its aspirations. 

Whether the change of sentiment thus described be 
or be not a subject for congratulation is a wide ques- 
tion : but it suggests the criterion which should decide 
whether we have or have not a right to the ancient 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 149 

title. There are, in fact, two courses which may be 
taken by those who believe in the continued vitality of 
Christian ideas. They may retain or reject what may 
be briefly called the ascetic element of the creed ; all 
the beliefs, that is, which gather round the doctrine 
that man's duty here is not to make the best of this 
world, but to prepare himself for another. The ultra- 
montane party boldly adhere to the first plan of action, 
and assert, as Dr. Manning has lately done, that their 
doctrines are not incompatible with progress. And of 
course it is undeniable that Romanism, like most other 
known forms of belief, denounces drunkenness, cruelty, 
and stealing, and is, so far, favourable to the honesty, 
sobriety, and other virtues which are essential condi- 
tions of progress. But the true difficulty of recon- 
ciling it to what is meant (so far as anything definite 
is meant) by progress remains in full force. There 
is, of course, the intellectual difficulty — the utter im- 
possibility of reconciling science and history as taught 
by the impartial inquirers, with the science and history 
as countenanced at Rome. But from that root spring 
difficulties of still wider and deeper character. First 
is the difficulty of giving real vitality to a faith which 
cramps and ultimately destroys all genuine love of 
speculative truth. The mob care little, it may be, for 
difficulties which affect Strauss or Mr. Darwin ; their 
brains are too torpid to be directly sensitive to the dis- 
turbances in a region of the atmosphere inaccessible to 
them. And yet when the brain is paralysed, even 



150 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

the organs which enjoy a mere vegetative existence 
gradually feel the change. Practically, what is pro- 
posed is a compromise degrading and ultimately cor- 
rupting. The cultivated classes are invited to acquiesce 
in a creed which they do not believe, or, in plainer 
language, to sanction systematic lying on consideration 
that the priests will keep the dangerous classes quiet. 
The dangerous classes are to give up their objectionable 
schemes, and to receive in exchange a good comfortable 
religious narcotic. Playing with the old-fashioned 
ecclesiastical toys, they are to forget their dreams of 
turning the world upside down. Undoubtedly there 
are many easy-going people who would be only too 
glad to accept that compromise for the sake of peace — 
that is to say, of their own comfort. Unluckily, there 
are difficulties in the way. In the first place, syste- 
matic lying does not answer in the long run ; and in 
the next place, the compromise turns out to be a de- 
lusion, for the strongest party is not to be so easily 
hoodwinked. If the revolutionary party would accept 
priestly guidance, it would only be on condition that 
the priests would guide them in the direction they de- 
sire. That the priest may become a demagogue, he 
must appeal to the passions upon which the demagogue 
works ; and the only question would be which party to 
the alliance would be making: tools of the other. If 
the priests were the dupes, our last case would be worse 
than the first, and we should be soon protesting against 
the most degrading tyranny which ever yet entered 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 151 

the world ; but in the other, the highest success must 
be won at a price fatal not only to democracy, but to 
progress in any intelligible sense. Imagine, in fact, a 
state of things in which the religion of all cultivated 
men is an organised hypocrisy, and in which the reli- 
gion of the lower means that they are drilled to obey 
a priestly order ; that humility is to be preached instead 
of independence, that poverty is to be consecrated in- 
stead of extirpated, and every spark of intellectual ac- 
tivity carefully trodden out for fear of an explosion. 
Practically that means that the population is to be 
emasculated in order that it may be kept quiet ; and 
that society is to consist of a superstructure of effemi- 
nate rich men with a foundation of contented and 
superstitious paupers. Certainly some virtues might 
flourish under such a state of things. Sobriety, 
honesty, and chastity might abound, as they abound 
in some priest-ridden countries ; but directly they bore 
their natural fruit, and gave rise to truthfulness, inde- 
pendence, and the masculine virtues, fresh opiates must 
be applied to lull the masses once more into in- 
difference. That such a consummation should be con- 
templated by cowards who have been frightened out of 
their belief in mankind, or in a divine superintendence 
of the world by the apparition of the red spectre, is in- 
telligible though it is melancholy ; but it cannot be 
tolerated by any one who has some remaining faith in 
the old precept of telling truth and shaming the devil. 
Like Goldsmith, indeed, many people want to be well 



152 FBEETHINKING AND PZAINSPUAKING. 

out of the reach of his claws before trying the experi- 
ment. They would rather soothe him by a little judi- 
cious equivocation, than fight him face to face. 

Undoubtedly priests, dukes, and other presumably 
educated persons can manage to grovel before the shrine 
of a Marie Alacoque. Treat believing as a branch of 
gymnastics and there is nothing, however revolting, 
which you may not train yourself to swallow. With 
care and practice you might cultivate a belief in 
witchcraft, astrology, or palmistry. A morbid love of 
the marvellous is not yet extinct in human nature, and 
even Cagliostro is not without modern successors. The 
system of drilling the mind into a docile acceptance of 
outworn superstitions may produce results interesting 
to psychologists. That it can ever generate a body of 
doctrine worthy to be called a religion will be believed 
by no one who has any faith in his race. You may 
train a clever man to abdicate his reason when he goes 
inside a church. You cannot form a stable creed 
which revolts every man of intellect who wishes to think 
systematically and honestly. And, therefore, it is 
needless to ask what would be the true name of such a 
faith, or whether such a hybrid form of opinion as a 
combination of a rational view of the universe for 
ordinary, with an irrational view for ecclesiastical pur- 
poses, would deserve to be called Christianity. 

Men of far greater intellectual weight proposeto adopt 
the alternative, and try to preach Christianity in such 
a way as not to run counter to the best aspirations of 



ARE WE CHRISTIANS? 153 

mankind. The question remains, whether the doctrines 
which they would preach are really Christian doc- 
trines reconciled to reason, or rationalism thinly veiled 
under Christian phraseology ? Which is the substance 
and which is the shadow? The answer would seem 
to depend upon the reply which we give to certain 
other questions. We can, for the thing has been done, 
use the old phraseology to represent new beliefs. We 
can talk about the corruption of mankind, when we 
really cherish a firm belief in progress and in the 
natural origin of all the virtuous instincts. We may say 
that Christianity is of divine origin, whilst we admit 
that, however much it differs in degree, it is identical 
in kind with all the other religions that move the 
world. We may express a belief in supernatural 
intervention in some past epochs, though banishing it 
from the present, and explaining that even in the past 
the supernatural was somehow the natural. We may 
continue to pray, whilst repudiating as superstitious 
or presumptuous all the meanings which men once 
attributed to prayer. We may talk about another world, 
whilst expressing disgust at all the purposes to which 
that belief was once applied, and explicitly founding 
our moral code on the necessity of adapting mankind 
to the conditions of this life, and denouncing every 
attempt to fit them for another. All this is possible, 
and many people draw the inference that it does not 
much matter which set of words we use : best, they 
think, use those which give the least shock to the 



154 FREETHINKING AND PL AINSPE AXING. 

vulgar. Against that doctrine I have tried to protest, 
in the interests of what I take to be honesty to ourselves 
and to others. But, at any rate, I confess that it 
appears to me to be a mere misnomer to call this body 
of doctrine Christian. And, therefore, I should be 
inclined to extend Strauss's answer to cover a still 
larger area. No ! I should reply ; we are not 
Christians; a few try to pass themselves off as 
Christians, because, whilst substantially men of this 
age, they can cheat themselves into using the old charms 
in the desperate attempt to conjure down alarming 
social symptoms; a great number call themselves 
Christians, because, in one way or another, the use of 
the old phrases and the old forms is still enforced by 
the great sanction of respectability ; and some for the 
higher reason, that they fear to part with the grain 
along with the chaff; but such men have ceased sub- 
stantially, though only a few have ceased avowedly, 
to be Christian in any intelligible sense of the name. 
How long the shadow ought to survive the substance is 
a question which may be commended to serious con- 
sideration. 



155 



CHAPTER V. 

A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 

It was bad weather in the Alps. The valley was 
roofed by a level mass of iron-grey cloud, behind 
which the existence of sun and sky was matter of 
faith. Trailing wreaths of mist descended white and 
ghost-like through the gorges ; an uneasy wind 
moaned round the projecting eaves of the little cluster 
of chalets that called itself a village ; from every 
spout a miniature waterfall leapt into the main street 
— little more than a cart-track at the best of times, 
and now a mere tributary to the glacier torrent that 
boiled with unusual vehemence round the huge 
boulders in its bed. Inside the inn the scene was not 
much more cheerful. It was a well-known centre for 
the tourist population, and English and Americans 
had gathered in great force from remoter districts in 
order to spend a Sunday after their fashion. There 
was scarcely standing-room even in the passages, 
where guides and their employers formed knots, dis- 
cussing in a revolutionary temper the perverse admi- 
nistration of the weather. The very atmosphere was 



L5Q FRJEETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

damp and sodden : the walls reeked with moisture, 
and the clouds of tobacco smoke hung heavily about 
the heads of the crowd, in unconscious imitation of 
the natural mists outside. Perhaps it was not unfair to 
assume that the Anglican congregation which occupied 
the dining-room of the establishment owed something 
to the want of any counter attraction. No great 
influence could be attributed, at any rate, to the 
eloquence of the worthy clergyman who rejoiced in 
so fine an opportunity for speaking a word in season. 
The sermon remains imprinted on my mind less for 
any intrinsic peculiarity than for a certain reason to 
be presently assigned. The preacher was a benevolent 
and sensible man, enjoying a holiday well earned by 
energetic labours at home. No one could have given 
shrewder and kinder advice in any practical difficulty, 
or had a keener sense of the value of clearness and 
truthfulness in ordinary affairs of life ; and so he 
calmly retailed his lengths of theological shoddy — old 
fragments of decaying systems woven into a web of 
the usual polish and flimsiness. He proved with 
great satisfaction to himself that a belief in the eternal 
damnation of unbelievers was a highly consoling 
doctrine. Of course I knew well that, as a matter of 
fact, my worthy friend would not willingly injure a 
fly, and that, so far from injuring the hair of a heretic's 
head, he would on no account hurt his feelings. It 
was only in words that he would attribute to his God 
a course of conduct which he would be the first to 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 157 

condemn in a fellow-creature. The knowledge of the 
utter unreality of his sentiments prevented any feeling 
of dislike, but it gave me a melancholy sense of the 
futility of the worthy preacher's eloquence. Could 
any prodigal son of the Church satisfy his spiritual 
appetite with these dry husks of obsolete speculation ? 
Discontented and wearied, I retired to the reading- 
room and seized upon the only available literature, in 
the shape of a back number or two of a highly respect- 
able periodical. There I found that a very energetic 
controversy was raging as to the efficacy of prayer. 
Some bold man had asserted that prayer was an obsolete 
superstition ; that, pray as men would, the rain would 
not cease till the barometer rose ; and that a good 
surgeon was worth incomparably more, in case of a 
broken limb, than supplications to all the saints in 
heaven. Much elaborate argumentation was opposed to 
the infidel ; but the bulk of it seemed to be singularly 
wide of the mark. Correspondents proved — what 
surely no one could deny — that, as God can do any- 
thing, He can, if He chooses, give health or fine 
weather, and may give them in answer to prayer. 
Some of them proved, with equal ease, that many 
things had happened for which people had prayed; 
or even tried to show, by old newspaper cuttings 
and vague stories Of wonder, that here and there, at 
remote times and in distant regions, things had some- 
times happened which implied the interference of a 
supernatural power. It might be all very true, and 



158 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

yet there was something depressing in this spectacle of 
sincere and religious people hunting painfully for 
some proof that the God whom they professed to 
adore was something more than a mere name. Here, 
in this remote Alpine district, the unsophisticated 
natives attach a different meaning to words. Had I 
not met a little procession praying for fine weather at a 
remote mountain chapel, and apparently believing that 
their conduct was just as rational as if they had been 
petitioning the State for a new road ? Was not the 
village church filled with votive offerings, with in- 
scriptions showing how on a given occasion the Virgin 
or some favourite saint had shielded a peasant from 
the descent of an avalanche, or pushed aside the 
trunk which was falling on his head ? Here, it was 
plain enough, the objects of worship were real beings, 
who actually interfered when they were requested, 
though it is true that they have shown some reluctance 
to intrude themselves into the midst of tourists from the 
outside world. But what kind of Deity was that in 
which these controversialists believed? They could 
define his nature with the utmost accuracy, and damn 
all who differed from their conclusions by so much as 
a hair's breadth; and yet they had recourse to long 
and refined arguments to prove — not that he governed 
the general course of affairs — but that every now and 
then, at long intervals, he possibly gave a fillip to the 
working of the machinery of the universe, though 
always in so modest a fashion that it was an open 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 159 

question whether his action was perceptible or not. 
They were content to show that the contrary hypo- 
thesis was not irrevocably established. Imagine an 
argument to prove the existence of Bismarck or Mr. 
Gladstone, or to show that heat and light really play 
a part in the affairs of the world ! Yet it seems that 
the Being whose existence is the central object of 
every creed can only be detected at rare opportunities 
and by dint of a series of far-fetched deductions which 
defy the ingenuity of ordinary men. There is surely 
something ominous in this strange combination of scho- 
lastic nicety in the sphere of pure speculation with 
the utter vagueness and uncertainty which hangs like 
a mist round all beliefs that bear upon practice. 

I was seized with that queer sensation of discord 
which sometimes overtakes one in certain situations. 
I have pored over moth-eaten volumes of ancient 
learning in a dusty library till I seemed to have 
passed into a dreamland of shadowy ghosts. The 
phantoms of old authors long dead and buried, seemed 
to be evoked from the dim, forgotten pages, and to be 
hovering around me — not perceivable by the bodily 
organs, though their presence was vaguely divined by 
the still embodied soul. So unearthly has seemed the 
borderland between the visionary and the actual, that 
I have rushed out into the world of common sights 
and sounds to assure myself of my continued corporal 
existence. But here my mind felt the discordant jar 
between the past and the present in a different shape ; 



160 FREETHINK1NG AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

a real flesh and blood human being spoke ; but his 
voice was the voice of the dead ; the outside world, as 
I sat in the reading-room, was only too tangible and 
concrete ; my ears were full of the voices of ladies 
discussing the last inn and the prospects of the 
weather; my toes were in danger from the nail- 
studded boots of athletic tourists, who stumped dis- 
contentedly through the inn and framed plans for the 
assault of peaks and passes. The thought came to me 
that I would retire to the dim mountain side, where 
human nature might be forgotten, and where, perhaps, 
I could find some breath from the dead centuries 
lingering amongst the eternal hills. There, at least, I 
could give myself up, without interruption, to the 
train of thought that had been suggested, and, like a 
magician in the wilderness, summon up the ghosts of 
the dead to reveal their true meaning. Actuated 
partly by this impulse and partly by the more vulgar 
motive of acquiring an appetite for dinner, I resolved 
to take a stroll in spite of the heavens. Leaving the 
little Babel of distracted life, I was soon breasting a 
steep slope behind the village. Every tree and every 
blade of grass was soaked and saturated in wet ; the 
path was a series of puddles rapidly connecting them- 
selves into rivulets ; the veil of rain first softened the 
outlines of the houses, and then speedily blotted out 
the whole village from my sight. An hour or two of 
resolute tramping and I was wet to the skin — a mere 
animated sponge, living on my supplies of internal 



A BAB FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 161 

warmth. Vigorous exercise soon put a stop to all 
cerebral action except that which was concentrated on 
finding the way — no very easy task in the pervading 
gloom. I had, however, reached a little upland glen 
well known to me as offering, in fine weather, a grand 
view of distant snow-peaks through the jaws of the 
cliffs. It was time to return, and the demon who 
amuses himself by beguiling Alpine travellers sug- 
gested the memory of a certain short cut which 
involved a bit of amusing scrambling. I was speedily 
occupied in fighting my way downwards through a 
steep ravine, cloven by a vicious little torrent from a 
lofty glacier, when — how it happened I know not, for 
all forms of earth and grassy slope were' obliterated at 
a few yards by the descending showers — I suddenly 
found that 1 had left the right track and was descend- 
ing too sharply towards the stream. At the same 
time I saw, or thought I saw, that by crossing the 
face of a cliff for a few yards I should regain the 
ordinary route. The first step or two was easy ; then 
came a long stride, in which I had to throw out one hand 
by way of grappling-iron to a jutting rock above. 
The rock was reeking with the moisture, and as I 
threw my weight upon it my hand slipped, and before 
I had time to look round I was slithering downwards 
without a single point of support. Below me, as I 
well knew, at a depth of some two hundred feet, was 
the torrent. One plunge through the air upon its 
rugged stones and I should be a heap of mangled 

M 



162 FREETHINKING AND PLAINS PEAKING. 

flesh and bones. Instinctively I flung abroad arms 
and legs in search of strong supports ; in another 
moment I was brought up with a jerk. My hands now 
rested on the narrow ledge where my feet had been 
a moment before, and one foot was propped by some 
insecure support whose nature I could not precisely 
determine. During the fall — it can hardly have 
lasted for a second — I had space for only one thought ; 
it was that which had more than once occurred to me 
in somewhat similar situations, and might be summed 
up in the single ejaculation — f at last ! ' Expanded to 
greater length, it was the one startled reflection that 
the experience which I had so often gone through in 
imagination was now at length to be known to me in 
the bitter reality. It was the single flash of emotion 
which — as one may guess — passes through the brain 
of the criminal when the drop falls, or the signal is 
given to the firing party. I had often made my way 
along dangerous ridges bounded by cliffs of gigantic 
height ; I had clung to steep walls of ice and passed 
shiveringly across profound crevasses ; a partial slip 
in such places had given me some faint foretaste of the 
sensation produced by an accident, and the single 
thought — if it may be called a thought — that occurred 
to me was this electric shock of colourless expectation. 
I call it colourless, for the space was too brief to 
allow even of conscious alarm or horror. Another 
half-second, and all thought would have been sum- 
marily stopped ; but when I suddenly felt that I was 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 163 

no longer falling, the next wave of emotion was com- 
pounded of vehement excitement and a sort of instinc- 
tive sense that everything might depend on my retain- 
ing presence of mind. Desperately choking back the 
surging emotions that seemed to shake my limbs, I 
sought for some means of escape. By slowly moving 
my left hand I managed to grasp a stem of rhododen- 
dron which grew upon the ledge of rock, and felt 
tolerably firm ; next I tried to feel for some support 
with the toe of my left boot ; the rock, however, 
against which it rested, was not only hard, but ex- 
quisitely polished by the ancient glacier which had 
forced its way down the gorge. A geologist would 
have been delighted with this admirable specimen of 
the planing powers of nature ; I felt, I must confess, 
rather inclined to curse geology and glaciers. Not a 
projecting ledge, corner, or cranny could I discover ; 
I might as well have been hanging against a pane of 
glass. With my right foot, however, I succeeded in 
obtaining a more satisfactory lodgment ; had it not 
been for this help I could only have supported myself 
so long as my arms would hold out, and I have read 
somewhere that the strongest man cannot hold on by 
his arms alone for more than five minutes. I am, 
unluckily, very weak in the arms, and was therefore 
quite unable to perform the gymnastic feat of raising 
myself till I could place a knee upon the ledge where 
my hands were straining. Here, then, I was, in 
an apparently hopeless predicament, I might cling to 

M 2 



164 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

the rocks like a bat in a cave till exhaustion compelled 
me to let go ; on a very liberal allowance, that might 
last for some twenty minutes, or, say half an hour. 
There was, of course, a remote chance that some 
traveller or tourist might pass through the glen ; but 
the ordinary path lay some hundred yards above my 
head, on the other side of a rock pinnacle, and a 
hundred yards was, for all practical purposes, the 
same thing as a hundred miles ; the ceaseless roar of 
the swollen torrent would drown my voice as effectu- 
ally as a battery of artillery ; but, for a moment or 
two, I considered the propriety of shouting for help. 
The problem was, whether I should diminish my 
strength more by the effort of shouting than the 
additional chance of attracting attention was worth. 
If the effort shortened my lasting powers by five 
minutes, it would so far diminish the time during 
which succour could be brought to any purpose. I 
had not the necessary data for calculation, and was 
not exactly in a frame of mind adapted for cool 
comparison of figures ; but a spasm of despair kept 
me silent. Help in any form seemed too unlikely to 
be worth taking into account ; the one thing left was 
to live as long as I could, though, to say the truth, 
five minutes' life on such a rack was a very question- 
able advantage. The vague instinct of self-preserva- 
tion, however, survived its reason ; all that I could really 
hope was that, by husbanding my strength as carefully 
as possible, I might protract existence till about the 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 165 

time when the dinner-bell would be ringing for my 
friends — a quarter of an hour away. Well, I would 
protract it — indeed, at times, a thought almost emerged 
to consciousness that I would make it as agreeable as 
might be under the circumstances ; but that, I need 
not say, was a thought which, however sensible, had 
too much of mockery in it to be explicitly adopted. 
In dumb obstinacy I clung as firmly as might be to the 
rocks, and did my best to postpone the inevitable 
crash. Yet I felt that it was rapidly approaching, 
and felt it at times almost with a sense of relief. 

It is often said that persons in similar situations 
have seen their whole past existence pass rapidly before 
them. They have lived again every little incident 
of their lives which had been forgotten in ordinary 
states of mind. No such vision of the past remains 
engraved upon my memory ; and yet I have a vivid 
recollection of the general nature of the thoughts that 
jostled and crowded each other in my mind. For the 
most part, I seemed to be a passive agent, utterly 
unable to marshal my ideas or to exercise any choice 
as to the direction my speculations should take. My 
will seemed to be annihilated, and I felt like a person 
to whom, by some magic, the operations of another 
man's mind should be thrown open for inspection. I 
was at once the actor and the spectator of a terrible 
drama — the last moments, for so I then supposed them 
to be, of a human being under irrevocable sentence of 
death. My double character enabled me at once to 



166 FREETIIINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

realise the full bitterness of my emotions, and to record 
them with ineffaceable accuracy ; for I still wake at 
times from dreams in which the minutest incidents of that 
half-hour's agony are faithfully reproduced. At times, 
a storm of bitter indignation at my own folly would 
hurry through my mind, firing me to bitter outbreaks 
of unavailing fury. At times, nature itself became an 
object of antipathy, and I felt a kind of personal 
dislike to gravitation and the laws of motion. Then, 
painfully distinct visions would pass before me ; I 
would see my friends below and listen to their con- 
versation, or a whole picture-gallery of incidents 
from my past life would pass before me, or my 
imagination would suddenly make a leap to home 
scenes, and to the employment which I had left for 
ever. Then I should be hurried involuntarily into an 
attempt to bring my mind into that state in which I 
had been taught to consider it proper to await death ; 
fragments of the sermon to which I had just listened, 
or of others which it suggested, would flash across my 
brain, and I should be suddenly plunged into vague 
speculations which at one moment seemed to be 
strangely chaotic, and at another appeared to afford 
glimpses into previously hidden mysteries of the 
universe. Useless I felt them to be, and yet by mere 
force of habit I fancied that they might be of infinite 
importance to mankind, and deserving of immediate 
publication. O. W. Holmes somewhere describes 
how, as he was sinking into unconsciousness under the 
influence of chloroform, he conceived himself to be 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 167 

suddenly inspired with a solution of the dark riddle of 
the world ; he wrote it down, and on coming again to 
himself found the remarkable sentence ( A strong smell 
of turpentine prevails throughout.' Perhaps the reve- 
lations which came to me were not much more to the 
purpose, but at the moment they seemed to be of un- 
speakable insignificance. And then a desperate resolu- 
tion not to die would overpower all other feeling, 
till a consciousness that no resolution of mine could 
work a miracle overwhelmed me again, and a moment's 
blankness suspended all conscious thought, 

Let me try to express more fully some of the wild 
and tyrannous imaginings that presented themselves, 
or rather seemed to be presented by some external 
power. Perhaps I am proving myself to be but a 
coward at the best. I ought to have been calm and 
resigned, and, without throwing away a chance of life, 
to have contemplated death with equanimity. It may 
be so ; and yet I confess that death approaching under 
such a form strikes me, to say the least, as decidedly 
unpleasant. Men have died before now in a great 
variety of ways, and many of them incomparably more 
terrible. But some more terrible forms of the great 
enemy are less trying to the nerves. When the Arch- 
bishop of Paris was shot the other day, we all admired 
— and very rightly — the resignation with which he fol- 
lowed the footsteps of his master. When his murderers 
were shot, and calmly cried f Vive la Commune ! ' at the 
fatal moment, we put it down to wild fanaticism ; yet, 
in both cases, the sufferers did only what has often 



168 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAK1NG. 

been done by many a degraded ruffian with no more 
symptoms of soul than a brute beast, who simply 
wished to satisfy such manly instincts as were left in 
him by dying game. It is life, not death, that is really 
the difficult business to manage gracefully ; and it is 
but a poor specimen of the breed who cannot go off the 
stage with a sufficiently good air, so long as there is 
an audience to applaud. But when you are in abso- 
lute solitude, when all your faculties are still in full 
vigour, when the bitter cup is seen steadily and 
remorselessly approaching your lips ; when the tide is 
rising inch by inch to overwhelm you in some closed 
corner, or when, as now, you are only waiting till the 
strength in your arms is no longer able to counteract 
the remorseless weight which seems to be drago-ing 
you down like an external enemy, then even a brave 
man has a hard task before him. I claim no more than 
the amount of courage which decency imperatively 
demands, and I felt very uncomfortable. But, at any 
rate, it is a question of confession, not of making an 
ornamental story. I should have liked to be a model 
hero or saint ; but heroism is sometimes harder than 
it seems to be in books. 

Thus, after the first frantic search for some means 
of escape, a vision came to me of the conversation 
which would be taking place in some half-hour or so, 
just about the time when all conversation would have 
definitely ceased for me. c He is late for dinner,' one 
well-known voice would be saying ; and another would 
be replying by a mild joke which had become a bye- 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 169 

word amongst our little party, as to my prejudices 
about soup. It would not be till dinner was over, 
and tobacco being calmly consumed, that satisfactory 
excuses would be framed for my absence. I remem- 
bered with bitterness a phrase which I had used, as to 
not waiting dinner for me, which would probably be 
pressed into the service of the speaker, to suppress all 
anxiety for the time. When night fell a little un- 
easiness would spring up, but it would be agreed 
that I had gone to a neighbouring inn. And not until 
that hypothesis was slowly exploded by facts would it 
occur to anyone that it was worth while to go and 
look for me, for what harm could happen to a tolerable 
walker in an afternoon's stroll ? and meanwhile, just 
about the time of that facetiousness over the soup, a 
ghastly mass would be rolled down the flooded stream 
within a few yards ol the inn. I could follow its 
course in imagination down the deep chasms which the 
waters of centuries have hewed in the valley below, 
and thence to the broad river at a day's journey. The 
remains of men lost in a glacier are restored at a 
distance of generations, but the torrent is a more re- 
morseless enemy, The disfigured fragments wouldhardly 
be worth hunting for. They were not a pleasant object 
for the imagination to dwell upon. As the lady 
remarks in Pope — > 

One would not, sure, be frightful when one's dead. 

And frightful was no word to express an object 
which — well ! I would try to avert my gaze, and then 



170 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

visions more really appalling would unroll themselves 
before me. Scenes from old days came back, though 
by what law they were selected remains unintelligible. 
Why should I have vividly remembered a certain 
boyish atrocity — not of specially deep hue, and, indeed, 
involving nothing more than an average schoolboy 
falsehood ? There had been something mean about it, 
and it had pricked my conscience at the time, and cost 
intermittent fits of blushing when accident had recalled 
it ; yet it had long since passed out of the category of 
memories capable of producing any serious emotion. 
Yet once more it stood up in its old hideousness ; and 
there, pilloried on a bare rock, and looking forwards to 
a death approaching by rapid strides, I was positively 
blushing for a lie told some five-and-twenty years 
before about eating a forbidden fruit. I have, I fear, 
committed many less excusable actions since ; but this 
wretched old crime rose up and mocked at me. My con- 
science, it seems, must have been tender at that early 
age, and the crime had scarred it so deeply that, under 
this blinding light of terror, the mark became visible 
in spite of all the innumerable scratches and cross- 
hatchings that had been made upon it since. Other 
recollections rose in countless throngs, of all hues and 
dimensions ; they came from school and college days, 
and from maturer life ; old scenes of friendship or of 
danger, of triumphs and disappointments, whirled con- 
fusedly before me ; but running through them all, like 
a recurring cadence in a piece of music, was this de- 
testable little memory which seemed resolved to exact 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 171 

the fullest expiation possible in the time. Perhaps 
after all it may have been of more importance than it 
seemed, and the mind have been really roused to clair- 
voyance by the extremity of its tension. And then 
would intrude another vision more awful by far : for 
an instant I seemed to see through the remorseless 
crags that closed me in, and far away, by a quiet 
shore and under a beautiful sky, I could see some 
whom I loved — but that way, I could still say with a 
desperate effort, madness lies ; and, with a fierce 
wrench of the faculties, I turned back to the less 
appalling realities of the situation. 

A puff of wind had driven aside the wreaths of mist; 
and high above me I could see towering into the 
gloomy skies a pinnacle of black rock. Sharp and 
needle-like it sprang from its cloud-hidden base, and 
scarcely a flake of snow clung to its terrible precipices. 
Only a day or two before I had been lounging in the 
inn garden during a delusive sunset gleam of bright 
weather, and admiring its noble proportions. I had 
been discussing with my friends the best mode of 
assaulting its hitherto untrodden summit, on which we 
had facetiously conferred the name of Teufelshorn. 
Lighted up by the Alpine glow, it seemed to beckon 
us upward, and had fired all my mountaineering zeal, 
Now, though it was not a time for freaks of fancy, it 
looked like a grim fiend calmly frowning upon my 
agony. I hated it, and yet had an unpleasant sense 
that my hatred could do it no harm. If I could have 
lightened and thundered, its rocks would have come 



172 FREETHINK1NG AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

down with a crash ; but it stood immovable, scornful, 
and eternal. There is a poetry in the great mountains, 
but the poetry may be stern as well as benevolent. If, 
to the weary Londoner, they speak of fresh air and 
healthful exercise and exciting adventure, they can 
look tyrannous and forbidding enough to the peasant 
on whose fields they void their rheum — as Shakespeare 
pleasantly puts it — or to the luckless wretch who is 
clinging in useless supplication at their feet. Grim 
and fierce, like some primeval giant, that peak looked 
to me, and for a time the whole doctrine preached by 
the modern worshippers of sublime scenery seemed in- 
expressibly absurd and out of place. 

The reflection brought back the recollection of my 
friends who were about this time thinking of washing 
their hands for dinner. What would my respectable 
friend the clergyman say to it all ? He was as little a 
bigot as most men ; but could he resist so tempting an 
occasion of pointing a professional moral ? Just before 
my slip I had been amusing myself by the reflection 
that an accident on Sunday afternoon, when all re- 
spectable persons were attending divine service, would 
come very well into a sermon. Now, for an instant, I 
heard and saw my friend in the pulpit,' really touched 
by the sudden disappearance, almost as it were from 
before his face, of a fellow-creature ; and anxious to 
say nothing to injure proper susceptibilities, and yet 
unable to avoid just hinting in the most delicate way 
in the world at the singular coincidence Of course, 



A BAB FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 173 

after the fashion of his kind, he would decline to say 
that it was more than a coincidence. People of good 
taste have given up dealing in providential judgments 
in particular cases. Perhaps it is because they do not 
believe in them ; but that is no reason why they 
should not hold them out as topics for pious consola- 
tion to those who do ; and therefore the preacher, with 
a certain half-conscious complacency, would hint that 
though Providence had not actually tumbled me off 
the rock, it had possibly arranged matters with a view 
to Christian edification. 

The thought suggested a whole train of more serious 
reflections. Was I, in fact, going decorously through 
that process which I had been accustomed to hear 
mentioned in sacred edifices as preparation for death ? 
When the Emperor Maximilian was hanging to the 
cliff above Innsbruck, the people gathered below to 
watch for his fall ; and the priests held up the host 
for his edification, and went through the proper per- 
formance for the consolation of a man in his last 
moments. Doubtless it was a satisfaction to the 
Emperor. He had been drilled for many years to go 
through the ceremony, and though it was not as 
pleasant as a coronation, I have no doubt that, as a 
brave man, or even as a coward, he would bring his 
mind into the proper frame. If I had been there — 
Protestant as I am by education, and inclined to free- 
thinking by nature — I don't think I should have 
proposed to enter into a controversy with him on the 



174 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

moment, and prove that the consecrated wafer was 
nothing more than a bit of bread. A great many 
excellent persons would, I know, have done so, and I 
should highly respect their motives — amongst others 
perhaps, a friend of mine, who once proposed an 
ingenious scheme for saving drowning men, which 
began by distracting their attention from the water. 
When, however, a human being has any charm or 
accustomed formula which steadies his faculties at so 
awful a moment, perhaps it is as well not to snatch it 
from him too hastily. In such mental storms the 
intellect has for the time abdicated its functions, and 
the emotions propel a man along what mathematicians 
would call the line of least resistance. He adopts the 
accustomed formula just because it is accustomed. 
If he has been trained to use the words of religious 
resignation, they come easiest to him, and he uses 
them, and the bystanders admire his marvellous 
constancy of mind. It may indicate courage, but it 
may also indicate the survival of an instinct after all 
power of external self-guidance has departed. Be- 
wildered, distracted, and for all practical purposes 
insane, he goes automatically through the performance 
which costs the least effort of reflection. But for me, 
unluckily or the reverse, no such formula was provided. 
A soldier, utterly beside himself in a forlorn hope, 
hears the word of command and obeys it, because it is 
easier than the exertion of independent will enough to 
run away. He is a hero out of sheer cowardice. 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 175 

Xapier tells a story of an officer who., at a critical 
moment, lay down behind a hedge, and whom no 
insults or exhortations could stir to show a touch of 
manly spirit. The same man, he adds, was a noted 
duellist, and met death soon afterwards under most 
appalling circumstances with a courage and coolness 
which astonished all beholders. Such apparent 
contradictions are common enough, and cannot always 
be explained. But probably it was not the danger 
but the responsibility that unmanned him in the 
battle ; it was the necessity of going back to first 
principles and reasoning coolly under fire when none 
of the accustomed formulas were ready at hand. My 
case was something similar. ~No cut and dried line of 
thought presented itself. My mind had been perplexed 
by infinite tracts, and sermons, and controversial 
papers, and the result was a drifting chaos of precedents, 
which whirled madly through my head without pre- 
senting any distinct result. I asked myself, as every 
true Briton would ask himself, what was the correct 
and gentlemanlike thing to do under the circumstances; 
but no leading case started up spontaneously for my 
guidance. I was thrown back upon that most im- 
portant of all questions, which we generally avoid so 
dexterously. What is this universe in which we live, 
and what is therefore the part we should play in it ? I 
had, perhaps, a quarter of an hour left in which to 
answer that question and a few others. Philosophers 
had wasted lives upon it, and my own previous 



176 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

speculations had not entirely settled the point. We 
are content to live in this world from hand to mouth, 
and to divert ourselves at each moment by the little 
signposts that previous authorities have set up, instead 
of referring to any general map of the world. Here, 
however, there was no signpost ; or rather a distracting 
mass of signposts, each saying in its own language, 
( This is the way to heaven,' seemed to dance before 
my imagination. To reason was of course impossible ; 
but with a rapidity unknown at other moments, each 
alternative seemed to embody itself in concrete form. 
Forgotten frames of mind reproduced themselves in 
quick succession and in a brief space. I had retraced 
stages of intellectual development through which I had 
passed in former clays. The world seemed scarcely 
real — except so far as pain and anxiety were real 
— but a shifting phantasmagoria, in which all earthly 
objects arrayed themselves in succession on the basis 
laid down by Protestants, Catholics, Epicureans, 
Positivists, Broad Churchmen, Pantheists, and a vast 
variety of sects. I looked as it were through the 
glasses provided by St. Paul, Spinoza, Marcus 
Aurelius, Dr. Newman, Epicurus, Comte, Thomas a 
Kempis, Luther, Dr. Cumming, and others, and tried 
which best suited my frame of mind. The world 
seemed at one moment a mere anteroom to heaven and 
hell; at another to be the whole accessible universe; 
at one moment this life was merely the first chapter of 
a story to be continued in an infinite series, and my 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 177 

soul an indestructible living essence, whose misery or 
happiness was of unspeakable importance ; at another 
I found myself only as one amongst the countless 
multitudes of animalcule which are crushed finally out 
of existence when you boil a kettle of London water. 
In passing through the forest above, I had, from sheer 
wantonness, struck my stick into a huge ant-heap, and 
perhaps slain half-a-dozen patriotic six-legged citizens. 
Was my death of any more real importance than 
theirs ? A sort of half grotesque sorrow that I had 
not let them alone just passed through my mind at the 
thought, though I cannot say that the reflection added 
materially to my mental sufferings. But of the 
thoughts which occurred to me I may say generally 
that I do not report them as creditable or orthodox, 
but merely as characteristic of a mind without fixed 
principles. 

Some of these shifting visions, it must be added, 
made themselves felt even at the time as mere freaks 
of fancy. Those, for example, for which the sermon 
on the Athanasian Creed had probably served as a 
nucleus, excited what under other circumstances would 
have been a sense of the ludicrous ; seen through an 
atmosphere of horror, it became fearfully grotesque. 
Everyone has read Jean Paul's grand vision of the soul 
waking up to find a godless world. A belief in im- 
mortality without a belief in a God is a fantastic com- 
bination of opinion which could only be used for ima- 
ginative purposes. To me, though I seemed to be 

N 



178 FREETHINKING AND PL UN SPEAKING. 

sounding all kinds of speculative depths and swaying 
from one creed to another through almost untrodden 
regions of thought, that awful dream never occurred. 
But, for an instant, a more hideous fancy presented 
itself. I contemplated the possibility of awakening to 
find not that the highest doctrines of theology were 
false, but that all its doctrines were true. I imagined 
a deity — for it would be profane to use in such a 
connection the holiest word of human language — pro- 
claiming to us miserable sinners, 6 Yes ! it is all true ! 
Every ghastly dream which the imagination of priests 
and prophets and holy writers has conjured up is, as 
they told you, but a faint image of the reality. You, 
and countless millions more like you, have been what 
you called good fellows ; you have paid your bills, been 
faithful to your wives, tolerably kind to your children, 
and on the whole enjoyed life and kept on the blind 
side of human justice. But you have not provided 
yourself with the proper passport ; you have wickedly 
left out a clause in the Athanasian Creed ; and you 
cannot plead " invincible ignorance," because you 
asserted, without due examination, that the whole com- 
position — whoever wrote it — was presumptuous non- 
sense. Ten minutes' more thought might have saved 
you. As it is, you shall be burnt for ever and ever 
with the Devil in hell.' 

That ghastly nightmare, as I have said, only flashed 

on my mind from some storehouse of dim childish 

ancies, and vanished like a bubble. Indeed, it would 



A BAB FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 179 

be but a grotesque caricature of what anyone now 
believes. It represents only what they occasionally 
say. Real belief in such doctrines has gone out with 
a belief in a horned, hoofed, and goggle-eyed devil. 
Probably the last genuine believer died at about the 
same time as old Dolly Pentreath, the last person who 
spoke Cornish. Perhaps it was Jonathan Edwards, 
who brought himself to take pleasure in thinking of 
the sufferings of the damned, by way of a creditable 
spiritual feat ; but to entertain it permanently implied 
the regular use of powerful stimulants, such as the 
burning of heretics. Persecution is, doubtless, a most 
powerful agent for producing conviction — in the perse- 
cutor ; but even the unchangeable and infallible Church 
is beginning to be shy of its old theories. We have 
naturally come to think of Auld Mckie-Ben from 
Burns's point of view with something like kindness, as a 
now harmless monster. And so I had the satisfaction of 
thinking that the Devil, at any rate, was not likely to 
meet me in the course of the afternoon ; and that the 
institution, which was abolished by Lord Westbury, 
had pretty nearly extinguished its fires before he had 
finally quenched them within the borders of the Church 
of England. 

Such hideous phantasms no longer haunt the day- 
light ; and I had reason to rejoice that they could not 
revive to torture my last moments. Yet the frame of 
mind to which they were congenial is not, as probably 
it never will be, extinct. And surely it was a time, 

i* 2 



180 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 






if not for colouring the whole universe with horror, at 
least for weaning myself from the present world. It 
is surely consoling to revile what one is forced to leave ; 
and theologians have provided a whole armoury of 
appropriate terms of abuse. The world, they tell us, 
is a scene of misery and revolt against the Divine will ; 
human nature is corrupt ; the heart of man is deceitful 
and desperately wicked ; nay, the animal creation is an 
appalling gulf of apparently aimless evil. Such words, 
though they now run glibly enough from the mouths 
of popular preachers, were once the cry of anguish of 
noble natures ; they were the expression of the revolt 
of the pure and gentle against dominant sensuality and 
tyranny of brute force ; though couched in the language 
of humility, they really testified to the elevation of 
minds goaded by a sense of evils, which only hardened 
coarser natures into an exaggerated repudiation of the 
existing order. Was not my position calculated to 
give them fresh meaning ? There was I, an involuntary 
Stylites, cut off from my kind, with black rocks frown- 
ing above me and the pitiless chasm beneath. No 
angelic vision was required to announce my approaching 
fate. Death was coming with all but visible strides. 
Nature looked savage enough, marking my sufferings 
with contemptuous indifference. Seen through the 
mist of despair that was beginning to cloud my imagi- 
nation, was it not easy to regard the world through 
the eyes of some old hermit expiring in the solitudes 
of the desert ? I am not much of an optimist at the 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 181 

best of times, and it was easy to paint man and nature 
in the darkest of tints. War, pauperism, stupidity in 
high places, hypocrisy in those which are called holy, 
cowardice, cruelty, ignorance, and general disorganisa- 
tion of the very framework of society ; are not these 
things common enough to enable one to part from the 
world without any bitter regret ? Why not fold my 
arms, shut my eyes, and pass contentedly from this 
distracted chaos, from which faith has disappeared and 
order is dissolving, to — whither ? That unfortunately 
is the question. We — for I need not confine myself 
to the singular — are less troubled to know what dreams 
may come, than whether there will be any dreams. All 
respectable persons profess to believe in a future, but it 
is a singularly vague one. No visible angels beckon 
to us with golden crowns, and all we know of what the 
blessed do above is that if they sing and love, they do 
it under conditions so unimaginable that the words 
become little more than empty syllables. The spon- 
taneous imagination of mankind, when it is not forced 
to run in orthodox directions, reflects our real beliefs 
in the superstitions miscalled spiritualist. Suppose 
that after the crash I should find myself rapping in a 
mahogany table ? Would not annihilation be prefer- 
able? Our hopes and fears are too shadowy to be 
grasped with much satisfaction, even when the material 
world is fading from our view. But another difficulty 
was reallv more invincible. The instinctive feeling 
remained that I would not die with a lie on my lips. 



182 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

A certain disposition to object to gratuitous falsehood 
was the only virtue on which I had much been in the 
habit of priding myself; and I could not tell a more 
direct lie than by professing disgust of the world. It 
always had seemed to me a very fair sort of place as 
worlds go. I had regarded the dogmas about the cor- 
ruption of our nature and the vileness of humanity as 
amongst those from which every spark of vitality had 
most completely departed. I never heard a congrega- 
tion describe itself as composed of miserable sinners 
without a longing to contradict it flatly. ' You are 
very decent people,' I wished to say, ( and your hearts 
are not bad organs in their way, though your brains 
might be a trifle more active. You are mechanically 
repeating fragments of an old melody from which all 
sense has departed.' My sponsors, I fear, were very 
officious in renouncing for me a world which I love 
with all my heart. Up to that luckless step I intended 
to enjoy it to the full. My digestion was in good 
order ; and it was only at moments of accidental dis- 
order that I could agree with Pascal, or humble myself 
after the pattern of a Kempis. I had meant to marry 
and have children, and make a decent income, and — if 
it may be said without offence — to drink my share of 
wine and enjoy good books, good cookery, and good 
pictures. Nay, I fancied that I might do my share of 
work, and leave the world a trifle better than I found 
it. I make no pretensions to be a hero, yet I should 
not think such a life incompatible with heroism. For 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 183 

heroism is measured by the strength of the passion 
which animates a man to great deeds, and not by the 
miseries to which it may accidentally expose him. 
However that may be, the world never looked more at- 
tractive to me than from that perilous ledge, nor did the 
commonplaces about the worthlessness of this life, and 
the disadvantages of setting one's affections on things 
below, ever seem more unreal. The danger of eternal 
damnation for neglect of dogmatic theology scarcely 
seemed more chimerical than the danger of damnation 
for being an average Englishman. Long training on 
cold water and bread Avith a due allowance of scourgings, 
may train a saint to regard death as a relief from a 
bed of hardships ; but the old man, as a Puritan 
would say, was still strong within me, and threatened 
to stick by me till that last plunge through the air. The 
advice to curse God and die came to Job from a very 
questionable quarter, and, for my part, I would not 
curse even the world from which our conceptions of 
the Divine nature must be derived. 

Another and a manlier doctrine was at hand. The 
Christian phraseology which has served to express the 
emotions of so many races and ages, has naturally 
become plastic. It lends itself no better to the ascetic 
than to the jovial preacher who avows and justifies 
his love for i women, wine, and song.' The Christian 
may regard creation not as groaning under a curse, 
but as the favoured garden of the Lord ; the heathen 
gods need not be devils in disguise, but dim reflec- 



184 FREETHINKING AND PLAINS PEAKING. 

tions of the true Divinity ; and the flesh, instead of 
being a deadly enemy to be trampled under foot, may 
be a serviceable ally, only requiring good athletic 
training. The preachers of this doctrine somehow 
extenuate damnation till it need not shock the tender- 
est nerves ; and make out that the corruption of man- 
kind, so permanent a dogma in orthodox sermons, is 
only a biblical way of stating Mr. Darwin's doctrines. 
Their shibboleth consists in prefixing to every natural 
object the possessive case of the Divine name, and in 
seeing proof of paternal benevolence through every 
corner of the universe. If in inferior hands, the 
doctrine takes a rather unctuous tone of almost rol- 
licking optimism, and rather exalts the flesh above the 
spirit, it must yet be granted that were it not in some 
sense a reflection of the truth, all sunshine would 
die off the face of the universe. But was it available 
at this moment ? Could I take this cheerful view of 
my fate ? If the leap that had been set for me was 
arranged by paternal kindness, the mode in which the 
kindness was manifested was, to say the least, mys- 
terious. In that, indeed, there could be no difficulty. 
The newspaper correspondents below had found in 
the depth of men's ignorance a perfectly satisfactory 
reason for expecting no specific answer to prayer. 
' If you want to work a miracle,' was the prayer of a 
simple American in a position somewhat similar to 
mine, ' now's your time ! ' I was too sophisticated for 
such an expression of faith. I should not have ex- 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 185 

pected a white-winged messenger from above to reach 
me a hand — however convenient it would have been 
— partly because I never expected to work miracles, 
and partly because, for anything I could say, the 
messenger might have been better employed. Who 
can say positively that it would not be better for the 
world at large if his neck were wrung five minutes 
hence ? Honest men before now have worked more 
mischief than knaves by reason of their honesty. For 
my part, though prepared to defend my life against 
individuals, I could suggest many reasons why a 
general tribunal of the universe should be glad to get 
rid of me. The murderer and thief who, in Parnell's 
fable, steals gold, and strangles babies, and drowns 
men, turns out to be a masquerading angel, and gives ex- 
cellent reasons for his apparent eccentricities to his per- 
plexed companion. Doubtless an angel who had tripped 
me up would justify himself — to an impartial observer — 
as easily as I would justify the shooting of a wolf, or the 
slaughter of a sheep. But then there is a painful am- 
biguity in these arguments from mystery. What is there 
behind the cloud ? Is it pure love and care for indi- 
viduals ? According to Butler, ' we make very free with 
Divine goodness in our speculations ; ' it is by no means 
6 a bare single disposition to produce happiness ; ' and 
with somewhat amazing calmness he asserts, after 
proving that the world is designed as a probationary 
state for the exercise of virtue, that to most men it 
proves a discipline of vice. The Divine laboratory, in 



186 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

other words, turns out more refuse than pure ore, and 
the destination of the refuse is unpleasant to contem- 
plate. And even if the old theological dialect be 
wrong, do not men of science fall in with this view ? 
Mr. Herbert Spencer pleasantly disperses our dreams 
of universal benevolence of design by the case of the 
loathsome parasites which torture, and, so far as we 
can tell, purposely torture the nobler organisms. If 
the Divine goodness has made vile insects to burrow 
in my tissues, can I be sure that my private con- 
venience has been much consulted in the arrangements 
of this universe ? Doubtless it is pleasant to believe 
otherwise with the immortal Pangloss, as with modern 
divines of the cheerful school. It would be pleasant 
to believe that I should escape from my rock, that a 
grateful country would present me to-morrow with 
10,000/. a year, and my works be read on every table 
in England and America. But our wishes are no 
logical support, though they are often enough the 
real cause of our belief in their fulfilment. Is it so 
sure that the solution of the great enigma is a pleasant 
one ? In one form or other, does not some dark mis- 
giving underlie all our schemes, orthodox and other- 
wise ? Can we quite get rid of hell ? Or if that is 
banished as an idle dream, can I still hope for any 
kind of heaven ? Will every man's single account be 
made to balance, or only the whole sum ? May I not 
be part of the refuse of the universe, a grain of the 
dtist crushed and comminuted by the working of 



A BAB FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 187 

the gigantic machinery, thrown aside with superb 
indifference, and compensated neither here nor here- 
after ? That is what the orthodox would think of a 
flea ; and in the presence of Infinity, what is the 
difference between a man and a flea ? We are all 
like the unlucky victims in Poe's story of the 
Inquisition. The walls are remorselessly closing upon 
us ; and with all our doublings, and turnings, and 
efforts, to see things in a different light, the same 
ghastly phantom of doubt haunts all creeds. It is 
transformed, not annihilated. 

From such comfortless thoughts I would occasion- 
ally, by a natural reaction, seek relief elsewhere. 
Let the universe take care of itself, and let me come 
to hard, tangible, unmistakeable facts. I am, what- 
ever else I may be, so much flesh and bones, worked 
by a certain amount of vital force ; a machine, with 
food for fuel, grinding out so much thought, motion, 
and producing sundry chemical and mechanical 
changes in surrounding objects. In half an hour 
more the material will be dispersed, and the forces 
transformed, for neither can be lost. What was me 
will be part of the glacier stream, or increasing the 
deposits on the flanks of the mountains. The forces 
that once digested food will be producing mere ferment 
in inanimate masses, and those which secreted thought 
will be helping, it may be, to curl the mists through 
the gorges. There are no hopes and no fears for the 
future, and I may take such comfort as I can in the 



188 FREETBINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

reflection that I, if I and my body are identical, am 
still part of the bigger thing which we call nature. I 
have known people who have professed to take pleasure 
in such contemplations ; for my own part, I confess 
that I felt as little interest in the probability of my limbs 
being worked up like old paper into a new product as 
in the fate of last year's clippings from my hair or 
parings of my nails. The various bits of matter that 
have formed part of my system become supremely 
uninteresting to me when disconnected from influence 
on my consciousness. Materialism of this brutal 
variety at least has not yet produced any formula 
which is very serviceable under such circumstances as 
mine. To take it into one's mind is to knock one's 
head in imagination against a blank wall, and there- 
fore not precisely exhilarating. And yet it may 
possibly help to a thought expressed in the nobler 
systems which are sometimes libellously described as 
materialist. The essence of religion consists, accord- 
ing to some thinkers, in depressing individualism. 
Why should we take such a keen interest in ourselves? 
Is not heaven merely a device for protracting our 
selfishness beyond the grave ? Why not seek comfort 
in the Pantheist view ? Death, let us say, is merely 
the process by which the little barriers of personality 
are broken down and we are absorbed into the world of 
spirit. We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and 
our little lives are not worth caring for. As Omar 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 189 

Khayyam puts it in one of the most impressive poems 
ever written — 

The eternal Saki from his bowl has poured, 
Millions of bubbles like ns, and shall pour. 

When the bubble bursts we melt into the great abyss 
of existence. Earthly limitations are removed, and 
why should we regret so paltry a thing as that which 
we call life ? Or let me try to take the recipe by 
which our positivist teachers would obliterate selfish- 
ness. Think of myself as a mere atom in the great 
current of humanity, a drop in the vast river whose 
end and origin are alike hidden in a mist which it is 
impossible to penetrate. Give up the dream which 
tries to displace, as it were, the centre of gravity of 
the universe, and to find a fixed shore beyond the 
boundless ocean. It is all, let me say, a delusion. 
The only reality is here, though I seek to discover it 
in an imaginary world. All my efforts to transcend 
the region of experience break down as surely as the 
efforts of a bird to soar above the universe. Grasp the 
sensible and abandon the delusive mirage, which is 
really but a reflection in my mind of what I see 
around me. Let me see what comfort such a thought 
can give me. Let me reflect that I have been an 
infinitesimal agent in the progress of humanity. For 
the visionary future let me substitute the future of 
mankind. I shall die and be forgotten ; but my work 
will live. The impulse that has been transmitted 
through me will be propagated onwards indefinitely. 



190 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

Progress — that excellent if rather vague entity — will 
continue. The world will go on getting a little better. 
The old strain of ferocity will die out, and the in- 
fluences of civilisation percolate to the furthest corners 
of the masses. The Social Science Association will 
gradually extend its soporific influence over the face 
of the world. There will be a thorough system of 
drainage, and reading and writing will be universal. 
Everybody will have a vote, and nobody will know 
how his neighbour has voted. Instead of cutting each 
other's throats, we shall cheat each other before an 
international tribunal. Each man will become exactly 
like his neighbour, and women be undistinguishable 
from men. Everything will be exquisitely quiet, re- 
spectable, and humdrum. Theology, now flickering, 
will go out, and we shall resign ourselves to the dark- 
ness. Perhaps, indeed, the old models will be more or 
less restored under a new and different name. We shall 
have a Pope, only in Paris instead of Rome, and he 
will preach scientific instead of theological dogmas. 
Providence will be superseded by the f three bankers ' 
of the future ; and the ancient temples and worship 
will arise from their ashes, with the trifling omission of 
belief in a deity. Whether such doctrines be true or 
false, they may, for anything I know, supply the 
groundwork of the poetry and the religious aspirations 
of the future. A positivist, or a negativist, or a 
materialist may find some utterance for his emotions 
in the dialect of his sect ; he may put together some 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 191 

kind of raft to support him sufficiently through the 
stormy passage of life. At present the edifice of his 
faith looks bleak and bare enough, and is to the older 
creeds what a contractor's row in London is to a 
venerable cathedral ; but it may be that when the 
scaffolding is removed, and associations have begun to 
gather round its walls, it will be a little more comfort- y 
ing to the naked and weary soul. It is the proper 
thing to recognise the good in everything— even in 
lying, and much more in a faith which errs, if it errs at 
all, by excess of candour. Nor is it proper, though it is 
very tempting, to sneer at the prospect held out to us. 
The new heaven, which is to be of this world and for 
the good of our descendants instead of ourselves, may 
not be very attractive ; but let us not deny that there is 
some progress that way. It is the worst kind of scepti- 
cism to disbelieve in man. Only one may safely assume 
that the contemplation is not at present calculated to 
produce a vehement enthusiasm. I did not, at any 
rate, find myself rapt into a seventh heaven of exalta- 
tion, from which such petty troubles as smashing my 
skull and stopping the action of my heart seemed insig- 
nificant trifles. The top of Pisgah is more difficult of 
access than the Matterhorn, and the view of the pro- 
mised land is apt to be hazy. Perhaps we are better 
than our ancestors ; war is not so savage as in the 
Roman days ; our bishops may be an improvement 
on the pagan pontiffs, and our modern revolutionists 
superior to the early Christians. I am not very well 



192 FUEETHIKKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

read in history, and I could not say dogmatically. 
But, at all events, the attitude in which one looks 
upon modern developments is one of hoping against 
hope, and trusting doggedly that some deeper current 
underlies the superficial eddies. New forms of 
physical disease and of social corruption are generated 
as certainly as old grievances are removed and old 
superstitions exploded. The world is somehow egged 
forwards rather than backwards by the efforts of a 
chaotic crowd of stupid people, each shoving blindly 
towards his own point of the compass ; those who 
accidentally push the right way are generally as dull 
as their neighbours, and one is often forced to say that 
but for the reformers one would be in favour of reform. 
Is the satisfaction of having taken part in this con- 
fused scramble any compensation for the loss of all 
private hopes and ambitions ? We can understand the 
soldier dying cheerfully when he knows that he has 
struck a good blow or two on the right side ; but the 
sense that one has done a little mischief in this Donny- 
brook fair of a world is not very consoling, even if you 
feel that your own faction is probably getting rather the 
best of it. Humanity will blunder on pretty much as 
it did before ; there will be a skirmisher the less in the 
great battle, and his place will probably be filled by a 
better man ; and meanwhile the loss to the sufferer 
personally is unmistakable. Perhaps it is conceivable 
that a youthful enthusiast might die happy in the 
thought that he had added a new clause to the Ballot 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 193 

Bill, and so helped the onward march of the world. 
The belief that clauses in bills, or speeches, or sermons, 
or even leading articles, do an appreciable amount of 
good is not very strong in me ; and I cannot affect to 
think that I have been more to the world than an ant 
to a mountain. We have both, it may be, cleared 
away a little rubbish — a dead caterpillar or an out- 
lying bit of humbug — but I could not soothe myself 
with thoughts of a ■ subjective immortality ' in the 
bosoms of the faithful. Humanity was too big and 
distant, and too indistinctly related to me, to lift me 
for one minute above the sense of that awful personal 
crash which was approaching so speedily. It was 
selfish, it may be; and our positivists promise to 
drill all that alloy out of us in time ; but I confess 
that the lively interest which I take in my own 
welfare and that of a few relatives somehow prevented 
my imagination from soaring to those empyrean heights 
whence all things would be seen in their true relations 
and my own insignificance be realised. And, somehow 
or other, one element of consolation seemed to be want- 
ing ; what is that instinct which seems to require 
something like a blessing to soothe the parting moment 
— some sense of sanctification to soften the harsh edges 
of hideous facts ? What is blessing, and what is 
meant by sanctifying ? Does the sentiment correspond 
to an instinct surviving from an antiquated stage of 
thought or to one lying in the deepest groundwork of 
human nature ? If too shadowy to grasp distinctly, it 

o 



194 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

is not the less patent, and at present, rightly or 
wrongly, I did not feel as though the sacraments 
administered by a high priest of humanity would do 
me much good. I should not shrink from him as from 
a bit of diabolical witchcraft, but perhaps I should be 
just a little inclined to laugh in the face of the minis- 
trant. If Maximilian's priest would be no comfort to 
me, he was trying to satisfy a feeling for which a 
satisfactory expression has not yet been found; his 
opiate has lost its power, but where is the new one ? 

From these and from other variations on the same 
theme no particular comfort came, as indeed was hardly 
to be expected. Indeed, to be candid, I suspect that a 
believer in any creed would have been highly uncom- 
fortable in my position. The one suggestion which 
was of some sort of use came from a different and a 
very undignified source. Years ago I had rowed and 
lost a race or two on the Thames, and there was a 
certain similarity in the situations, for there comes a 
time in a losing race when all hope has departed, and 
one is labouring simply from some obscure sense of 
honour. The sinews of the arms are splitting, the back 
aches, and the lungs feel as though every blood-vessel 
in them were strained almost to bursting point. What- 
ever vital force is left is absorbed in propelling the 
animal machine ; no reason can be distinctly given 
for continuing a process painful in a high degree, 
dangerous to the constitution, and capable of producing 
no sort of good result ; and yet one continues to toil 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 195 

as though life and happiness depended upon refraining 
from a moment's intermission, and, as it were, nails 
one's mind — such as is left — down to the task. Even 
so the effort to maintain my grasp on the rock became 
to me the one absorbing thought ; this fag end of the 
game should be fairly played out, come what might, 
and whatever reasons might be given for it. 

It was becoming tempting to throw up the cards 
and have done with it. Even the short sharp pang of 
the crash on the rocks below seemed preferable to 
draining the last dregs of misery. And yet, stupidly 
or sensibly, my mind fixed itself on at least holding 
out against time, and discharging what seemed to be a 
kind of duty. All other motives were rapidly fading 
from me, and one theory of the universe seemed to be 
about as uninteresting as another. The play should 
be played out, and as well as it could be done. Yet, 
before the end, I gave one more frantic glance at the 
position, and suddenly, to my utter astonishment, a 
new chance revealed itself. Could I grasp a certain 
projection which I now observed for the first time, I 
might still have a chance of escape. But to gain it, 
it was necessary to relax my hold with the right hand, 
and make a slight spring upwards. If the plan had 
occurred to me at the first moment, it might not have 
been difficult. But my strength had ebbed so far that 
success was exceedingly doubtful. Still it was the 
one chance, and at worst woul hasten the crisis. I 
gathered myself up, crouching as low as I dared, and 

o 2 



196 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

then springing from the right foot, and aiding the 
spring with my left hand, I threw out my right at the 
little jutting point. The tips of my fingers just 
reached their aim, but only touched without anchoring 
themselves. As I fell back, my foot missed its former 
support, and my whole weight came heavily on the 
feeble left hand. The clutch was instantaneously torn 
apart, and I was falling through the air. The old 
flash of surprise crossed my mind, tempered by some- 
thing like a sense of relief. All was over! The 
mountains sprang upwards with a bound. But before 
the fall had well begun, before the air had begun to 
whistle past me, my movement was arrested. With a 
shock of surprise I found myself lying on a broad bed 
of deep moss, as comfortably as in my bed at home. 
As my bewildered senses righted themselves, I under- 
stood it all. The facts were simple and rather 
provoking. Before attempting the passage across the 
rock-face, I had noted, though without much conscious 
attention, that beneath my narrow ledge there was a 
broader one, some ten feet lower down. The sudden 
alarm produced by the slip, whilst reviving so much 
else, had expunged this one practically useful memory 
completely and instantaneously. But now, as it came 
back to me, I easily convinced myself not only that I 
had never been in danger, and thus that all my agony 
had been thrown away, but that I had never even 
done anything rash. It was rather humiliating, but 
decidedly consoling, and in some sense comforting to 



A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS. 197 

my self-esteem. As I slowly picked myself up, I 
looked at my watch. It followed, from a comparison 
of times, that I had not been stretched on the rack 
for more than five minutes. Besides the obvious 
reflection that in such moments one lives fast, it also 
followed that I might still be in time for dinner. I got 
on my legs, trembling at first, but soon found that 
they could carry me as fast as usual down the well- 
known path. I was in time to join my friends at the 
table d 'hote, joined in the usual facetiousness about 
the soup, and spent the evening — for the clouds were 
now rolling away — in discussing the best mode of 
assaulting our old friend the Teufelshorn. 






It may be as well to say, for the credit of the 
noble science of mountaineering, that the foregoing 
narrative is without even a foundation in fact. 



198 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 



CHAPTEE VI. 

Shaftesbury's ( characteristics.' l 

The third Lord Shaftesbury is one of the many- 
writers who enjoy a kind of suspended vitality. His 
volumes are allowed to slumber peacefully on the 
shelves of dusty libraries till some curious student of 
English literature takes them down for a cursory 
perusal. Though generally mentioned respectfully, 
he has been dragged deeper into oblivion by two or 
three heavy weights. Besides certain intrinsic faults 
of style to be presently noticed, he has been partly 
injured by the evil reputation which he shares with 
the English Deists. Their orthodox opponents suc- 
ceeded in inflicting upon those writers a fate worse 
than refutation. The Deists were not only pilloried 
for their heterodoxy, but indelibly branded with the 
fatal inscription e dulness.' The charge, to say the 
truth, was not ill-deserved ; and though Shaftesbury 
is in many respects a writer of a higher order than 
Toland, Tindal, or Collins, he cannot be acquitted of 

1 ' Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times.' By the Eight 
Hon. Anthony Earl of Shaftesbury. 3rd edit., 1723. 



SHAFTESBURYS 'CHARACTERISTICS: 199 

that most heinous of literary offences. Attempts, 
however, have lately been made to resuscitate him. 
His works have recently been republished in England, 
and a vigorous German author, Dr. Spicker, has 
appealed against the verdict which would consign him 
finally to the worms and the moths. To an English 
student there is something rather surprising, and not 
a little flattering, in this German enthusiasm. We 
are astonished to see how much can be elicited by 
dexterous hands from these almost forgotten volumes. 
A countryman of Kant and Hegel, and one, too, 
familiar with the intricacies of that portentous philo- 
sophical literature which Englishmen, even whilst 
they sneer, regard for the most part with mysterious 
awe, can still discover lessons worth studying in a 
second-rate English author of Queen Anne's time. To 
understand him properly, it is necessary, in Dr. 
Spicker's judgment (so, at least, we may infer from 
the form of his book), to cast a preliminary glance 
over the history of religion and philosophy, to study 
the views of Paul and Aquinas, and Kant and 
Spinoza, and Schleiermacher and Strauss, and to 
plunge into speculations about the soul, about being 
and non-being, and the proofs of the existence of God 
and a future life. When thus duly prepared, we may 
form an estimate of Shaftesbury's writings, and then 
we may draw certain conclusions as to the nature of 
the Hebrew genius, the true use of the Bible, the 
difference between the ideal and the historical Christ, 



200 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

the religious problems of the future, and the Archi- 
medean point of philosophy. We need not follow Dr. 
Spicker's reflections upon these deep topics. We may, 
perhaps, feel a certain giddiness when we see so many 
reflections evolved from so comparatively trifling a 
source. We resemble the fisherman in the ( Arabian 
Nights ' : we have been keeping our genie locked up 
between his smoke-dried covers ; and behold ! at the 
touch of this magician's hand, he rises in a vast cloud 
of philosophy till his head reaches the skies and his 
shadow covers the earth. Would not Shaftesbury, 
we are apt to ask, have been rather surprised had he 
known what boundless potentialities of speculation 
were germinating in his pages ? May not his German 
commentator, indeed, be slily laughing at us in his 
sleeve, and making of poor Shaftesbury a mere 
stalking-horse, under whose cover to bring down 
game whose very existence was unsuspected by his 
author? In fact, it seems probable that on some occa- 
sions Dr. Spicker has confused a little the treasures 
which he found with those which he brought. He 
has given additional fulness of meaning to Shaftes- 
bury's vague hints and inconclusive snatches at 
thought ; and though he may be personally conscious 
of the difference between the germ and the full 
development, his readers may find it difficult to detect 
the real Shaftesbury thus overlaid with modern 
theory. Yet Dr. Spicker brings high authorities for 
attributing some greater value to Shaftesbury than we 



SHAFTESBURY'S 'CHARACTERISTICS: 201 

generally allow. Hettner, for example, calls him 
one of the most important literary phenomena of the 
eighteenth century. Not only the English, he says, 
but all the greatest minds of the period — Leibnitz, 
Voltaire, Diderot, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Wieland, 
and Herder — drew the richest nourishment from his 
pages ; and he extends to all his writings Herder's 
enthusiastic description of ' The Moralists ' as a dia- 
logue almost worthy of Grecian antiquity in form, 
and far superior to it in contents. Have we, indeed, 
been entertaining an angel unawares? Dr. Spicker, 
of course, quotes the old example of Shakespeare, and 
once more assures us that we never recognised the 
value of our national poet until his significance was 
fully revealed to us by German critics. There is, 
however, a marked difference between the cases. 
Shakespeare, though our German friends may choose 
to forget it, was the object of our national adoration 
long before he became the idol of the whole world. 
Our enthusiasm was almost as unqualified in the days 
of Garrick and Johnson as now, and Pope reveals 
what was the popular creed even in his day, when he 
speaks of 

Shakespeare, whom you and every playhouse bill 
Style the divine, the matchless, what you will. 

The Germans did not originate our faith ; they 
enabled us, at most, to give a reason for it. But if 
Shaftesbury is to be raised to a lofty place in our 
Walhalla, the enthusiasm has to be created as well as 



202 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

explained. In such questions the vox populi is very 
nearly infallible. When critics declare that an 
author does not deserve the neglect which he receives, 
the admission of the fact is generally more significant 
than the protest. When, as sometimes happens, we 
find a man being still refuted a century after his 
death, we may be pretty sure that he said something 
worth notice ; and, inversely, when we find that 
nobody cares to refute hira, it is tolerably safe to 
assume that he had no genuine vitality. 

In considering, however, the value of this appeal 
against the verdict of posterity, we must admit that 
there are certain reasons, besides Shaftesbury's in- 
trinsic want of merit, which may account in some 
measure for his neglect. They are reasons, too, which 
are more likely to repel a native than a foreign 
reader. The feeling of annoyance which generally 
causes a student to put down the ' Characteristics ' 
with a certain impatience is more or less due to 
defects which would be less perceptible to a German, 
especially to a German endowed with the national 
robustness of literary appetite. Shaftesbury suffered 
under two delusions, which are unfortunately very 
common amongst authors. He believed himself to 
possess a sense of humour and a specially fine critical 
taste. Whenever he tries to be facetious he is 
intolerable; he reminds one of that painful jocosity 
which is sometimes assumed by a grave professor, who 
fancies, with perfect truth, that his audience is in- 



SHAFTESBURY'S ' CHARACTERISTICS: 203 

clified to yawn, and argues, in most unfortunate 
conflict with the truth, that such heavy gambols as he 
can manage will rouse them to the smiling point. The 
result is generally depressing. Yet Shaftesbury is 
less annoying when he is writhing his grave face into 
a contorted grimace than when the muse, whom he is 
in the habit of invoking, permits him to get upon 
stilts. His rhapsodies then are truly dismal, though 
they are probably improved when they are translated 
into German. One awkward peculiarity must dis- 
appear in the process. His prose, at excited moments, 
becomes a kind of breccia of blank verse. Bishop 
Berkeley ridicules him by printing a fragment of the 
1 Soliloquy ' in this form ; and by leaving out a word 
or two at intervals it does, in fact, very fairly repre- 
sent the metre which did duty for blank verse in the 
reign of Dryden and Pope. Here, for example, is a 
fragment taken pretty much at random from ' The 
Moralists ' — 6 Or shall we mind the poets when they 
sing thy tragedy, Prometheus, who with thy stol'n 
celestial fire, mixed with vile clay, didst mock heaven's 
countenance, and in abusive likeness of the immortals 
madest the compound man, that wretched mortal, ill 
to himself and cause of ill to all ? ' No English critic 
can witness his native language tortured into this 
hideous parody of verse^ without disgust. Shaftes- 
bury's classicism too often reminds us of the con- 
temporary statues in which George I. and his like 
appear masquerading in the costumes of Roman 



204 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

emperors. His English prose is to the magnificent 
roll and varied cadences of Jeremy Taylor, or Milton, 
or Sir Thomas Browne, what Congreve's versification 
in the f Mourning Bride ' is to the exquisite melody of 
Massinger, Fletcher, or Shakespeare. No philoso- 
phising can persuade us out of our ears, and Shaftes- 
bury's mouthing is simply detestable. The phenomenon 
is the more curious when we remember that he prided 
himself on his exquisite taste, and was a contemporary 
of Swift and Addison. But the defect goes much 
deeper than is indicated by these occasional lapses 
into a kind of disjointed ambling. Herder, as we 
have seen, admires his ' Platonic Dialogues': we prefer 
the judgment of Mackintosh, a favourable critic, who 
admits his performance to be i heavy and languid,' and 
we may add that the excuse made for him on the 
ground that modern manners are unsuitable to this 
form of composition must be balanced by the recol- 
lection that, in spite of these difficulties, Berkeley was 
almost at the same time composing dialogues which 
are amongst the most perfect modern examples of the 
style. The difference between the two, from a purely 
artistic point of view, is as great in all other respects 
as is the difference between Shaftesbury's lumbering 
phraseology and Berkeley's admirably lucid English. 
Shaftesbury's desire to affect a certain gentlemanlike 
levity, and to avoid a pedantic adherence to system, 
makes him a singularly difficult writer to follow. He 
is never content with expressing his meaning plainly 



SHAFTESBURY'S 'CHARACTERISTICS: 205 

and directly. It must be introduced to us with all 
manner of affected airs and graces ; the different parts 
of his argument, instead of being fitted into a logical 
framework, must be separated by discursive remarks 
upon things in general; they must be made acceptable 
by a plentiful effusion of rhetoric ; we must be amused 
by digressions and covert allusions, and be seduced 
into our conclusions by ingeniously contrived and 
roundabout methods of approaching the subject. A 
skilful writer of a dialogue conceals his plan but 
never forgets it ; and if it be stripped of the external 
form, we find beneath a sinewy and well-compacted 
system of reasoning. But Shaftesbury introduces real 
confusion by way of effectually concealing his purpose; 
and when we get rid of the tiresome personages who 
thrust their eloquence upon us, we discover an argu- 
ment torn to shreds and patches, and needing entire 
re-arrangement before we can catch his drift. Dr. 
Spicker, who does not speak of these defects, has 
applied the proper remedy by reducing Shaftesbury's 
scattered utterances under logical heads, and brings 
out a far more definite and coherent meaning than 
would be discovered by any but a very attentive 
reader. Shaftesbury, in short, is deficient in the 
cardinal virtues of clearness and order ; and the 
consequence is that, working upon abstruse topics, he 
tries the patience of his readers beyond all ordinary 
bearing. Perhaps this is a sufficient reason for the 
neglect which has overtaken him, for the writers are 



206 FREETHINKING AND PLA1NSPEAKING. 

few and fortunate who have succeeded in reaching 
posterity without the charm of a beautiful style. Are 
we further justified in assuming, on the strength of the 
common maxim, that the style indicates the man, and 
throwing him aside without further notice ; or is there 
really some solid value in a writer who undoubtedly 
exercised a powerful influence upon English thought, 
and, as we see, has found such wide acceptance in 
foreign countries ? 

The best mode of answering that question would 
probably be to examine Shaftesbury's writings in 
rather closer connection with his historical position 
in English literature than has been done by Dr. 
Spicker. Without enquiring what sermons may be 
preached from the texts which he supplies, we may 
ask what the real man actually thought, and how he 
came to think it. In regard to the first question we 
have at least ample materials. Shaftesbury, in spite 
of his desultory mode of exposition, had a distinct theory 
about the universe, and has managed to expound it 
sufficiently, though circuitously, in the 6 Characteris- 
tics.' 

That book is a collection of essays published within 
the few years preceding his death. The first of these, 
the ' Letter on Enthusiasm,' gives Shaftesbury's view 
of the religious movements of his day. The doctrine 
which it contains, with some of its applications to 
moral philosophy and to literary criticism (the connec- 
tion, as will presently appear, is characteristic), is ex- 



SHAFTESBURY'S 'CHARACTERISTICS: 207 

pounded in the essay called f Sensus Communis,' and 
in the f Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author.' The 
essay on ' Virtue,' of which an imperfect copy had 
been published by Toland, is the most systematic 
statement of his views on morality ; the i Moralists, a 
Rhapsody,' is a kind of appendix to it, with an ampli- 
fication of some of his conclusions. The ' Miscellaneous 
Reflections' form a running commentary on all the 
preceding essays ; and the ( Choice of Hercules,' 
which completes the collection, is an aesthetic disserta- 
tion, which may be compared to Lessing's { Laocoon.' 
The coincidence in thought is exhibited by Br. 
Spicker, and De Quincey has prefaced his translation 
of Lessing's essay by a parallel between the two 
writers. As we shall not again refer to this subject, 
it will be enough to say that Shaftesbury deserves 
credit for partly anticipating the views of his more 
distinguished successor, though he has little to say 
which is worth the attention of any modern reader. 

The remainder of his writings all turn more or less 
upon the great question of the theory of morals and 
their relation to religion, and it is as the representative 
of a particular theory of moral philosophy that Shaftes- 
bury is chiefly remembered in England. His fame, 
even in that province of speculation, has become 
rather dim ; yet he exerted a very powerful influence 
upon Butler, Hutcheson, and other English moralists ; 
and, for that, if for no other reason, his views deserve 
some attention. They will be best expounded by 



208 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

starting from the consideration of the influences which 
chiefly contributed to his intellectual development. 

Shaftesbury, it need hardly be said, was by birth 
and education a fitting representative of the Whig 
aristocracy in its palmiest period. The grandson of 
Achitophel, and brought up under the influence of 
Locke, he imbibed from his cradle the prejudices of 
the party which triumphed in the Revolution of 1688. 
During his political life, though short and interrupted 
by ill-health, he was a supporter of the Revolution 
principles, and if he diverged from his party he pro- 
fessed to diverge from them by adhering more consis- 
tently to their essential doctrines. He accepted the 
Whig shibboleth of those days ; he was in favour of 
short parliaments, opposed to standing armies, and 
ready to exclude all pensioners from seats in the 
House of Commons. Above all he shared the Whig 
antipathy to the High Church principles of the day. 
The whole party from Atterbury to Sacheverell was 
utterly hateful to him. The Church of England had 
been deprived by the Revolution of the power of per- 
secution, but it still retained exclusive privileges. 
Dissenters, though not liable to punishment, were not 
admitted to full citizenship. Sound Churchmen, 
though compelled to accept toleration, clung all the 
more anxiously to the remnants of their old supremacy. 
To all such claims Shaftesbury was radically opposed. 
He was not, indeed, as without an anachronism he 
could not have been, opposed to a State Church. On 



SHAFTESBURY'S ' CHARACTERISTICS: 209 

the contrary, he regarded it as a valuable institution, 
but valuable not as justifying the pretensions of priests, 
but as tying their hands. He held substantially the 
opinion which is common amongst a very large body of 
laymen at the present day. A Church, in strict sub- 
ordination to the power of the laity, is an admirable 
machinery for keeping priestly vagaries within bounds. 
"With a contemptuous irony he professes (' Misc.'' V. 
chap. 3) his ( steady orthodoxy, resignation, and entire 
submission to the truly Christian and Catholic doc- 
trines of our holy Church, as by law established.' He 
held in the popular phrase that the Thirty-nine 
Articles were articles of peace ; that is to say, that 
they were useful to make controversialists hold their 
tongues, though it would be quite another thing if one 
were asked to believe them. For their own sakes he 
loved Dissenters as little as Churchmen, and despised 
them more ; his ideal was an era of general indifference, 
in which the ignorant might be provided with dogmas 
for their amusement, and wise men smile at them 
in secret. The doctrines of all theologians, in fact, 
were infinitely contemptible in the eyes of cultivated 
persons ; but the attempt to get rid of them would 
cause a great deal of useless disturbance. The best 
plan was to keep the old institution in peace and quiet, 
and to allow it to die as quietly as might be. 

In all this there was nothing peculiar to Shaftesbury, 
'nor even to Shaftesbury's era. So far, he might have 
| been an ordinary representative of the great Revolution 

p 



210 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKINO. 

families, who, when their position was once secure, 
were content with keeping things tolerably quiet so 
long as they could divide places and profit. He might 
have drunk to the glorious and immortal memory of 
our deliverer, and have become a candidate for office 
under Godolphin or Harley. Circumstances, however, 
led to his imbibing doctrines of a less commonplace 
character. He remained a member of the English 
aristocracy — at a time, it must be added, when the 
English aristocracy not only governed the country, 
but was qualified to govern by a more liberal spirit 
than that which animated the class immediately below 
it. But in him the English aristocrat was covered 
by a polish derived from a peculiar training. At an 
early age he had been sent to Winchester. The 
proverbial generosity and high spirit of an English 
public school exhibited itself by making the place too 
hot to hold him, as some retribution for the sins of his 
grandfather. Perhaps he had to learn the meaning of 
( tunding.' He had already acquired a familiarity 
with the classical languages by the same method as 
Montaigne, under the guidance of a learned Mrs. 
Birch, and was able to enjoy reading Greek and 
Latin literature instead of having small doses of 
grammar pressed upon him by scholastic drillmasters. 
At a later period he made one of those Continental 
tours from which young men of promise and position 
must sometimes have derived a training rather different 
from that which falls to the lot of the modern tourist. 



SHAFTESBURY'S 'CHARACTERISTICS: 211 

In Italy he learnt to have a taste, and his writings are 
coloured, and sometimes to an unpleasant degree, by 
the peculiar phraseology of the artistic connoisseur. 
In Holland he made the acquaintance of the leaders 
of European criticism, Bayle and Leclerc. He learnt 
that England was not the whole world, and discovered 
that the orthodox dogmas did not entirely satisfy the 
demands of the enquiring minds of the time. He 
acquired, in short, certain cosmopolitan tendencies. 
( Our best policy and breeding/ he complains (Misc. III. 
ch. i.), ( is, it seems, to look abroad as little as possible ; 
contract our views within the narrowest possible com- 
pass, and despise all knowledge, learning, and manners 
which are not of home growth.' Had the term been 
popularised in his day, he would have complained of 
the Philistine tendencies of his countrymen, and in- 
sisted upon that unfortunate provincialism which is 
characteristic even of our best writers. He has little 
hopes, he tells us (Misc. III. ch. i.), of being relished 
by any of his countrymen, except ' those who delight 
in the open and free commerce of the world, and are 
rejoiced to gather views and receive light from every 
quarter.' He is always insisting upon the importance 
of cultivating a refined taste, as the sole guide in art 
and philosophy. ( To philosophise in a just significa- 
tion is but to carry good breeding a step higher' (ib.) 
i The taste of beauty and the relish of what is decent, 
just, and amiable, perfects the character of the gentle- 
man and the philosopher.' The person who has 

p 2 



212 FREETH1NKING AND PLAINSPEAK1NG. 

thoroughly learnt this lesson is called, in his old- 
fashioned dialect, the e virtuoso ; ' and the various 
phrases in which he expounds his doctrines may be 
translated into modern language by saying that he is 
a prophet of culture, a believer in ; Geist,' and a con- 
stant preacher of the advantages of sweetness and 
light. In short, Lord Shaftesbury may for such 
purposes be called the Matthew Arnold of Queen 
Anne's reign. Mr. Arnold, indeed, possesses what 
Shaftesbury only imagined himself to possess — a style 
of singular elegance, and has profited by a culture far 
more complete than could fall to the lot of Shaftesbury. 
Such analogies, indeed, are always unfair to one or 
both of the writers compared, and I merely intend to 
give a slight indication to modern readers of Shaftes- 
bury's general tendencies. Meanwhile it is needless 
to insist too strongly upon the resemblance, for we 
may, without any help from such indirect methods, 
interrogate Shaftesbury himself. 

His first two treatises give us his view of contem- 
porary theologians. The ( Letter concerning Enthu- 
siasm ' was provoked by the strange performances of 
the French prophets, who were holding revivals and 
working miracles in London amidst an unbelieving 
population. The old spirit of Puritanism was at its 
very lowest ebb. The generation of Dissenters which 
had produced Baxter and Bunyan had passed away ; 
that which was to produce Wesley and Whitefield was 
still in its cradle. Nothing remained but a grovelling 



SHAFTESBURY'S 'CHARACTERISTICS: 213 

superstition, unlovely in its manifestations, and ridicu- 
lous to the cultivated intellect of the time. Shaftes- 
bury speaks of their performances as a Saturday Re- 
viewer might speak of an American camp-meeting. 
Their supposed miracles are explained by the natural 
contagion of an excited crowd of fanatics. ( No 
wonder if the blaze rises of a sudden ; when innumer- 
able eyes glow with the passion, and heaving breasts 
are labouring with inspiration ; when not the aspect 
only, but the very breath and exhalations of men are 
infectious, and the inspiring disease imparts itself by 
immediate transpiration.' (Enthusiasm, § 6). For 
such a disease there is one complete panacea. Ridi- 
cule is the proper remedy for fanaticism. Persecution 
would fan the flame. These charlatans would be 
grateful if we would only be so obliging as to break 
their bones for them ( after their (the French) country 
fashion, blow up their zeal, and stir afresh the coals 
of persecution.' (lb. § 3.) We have had the good 
sense instead of burning them to make them the 
subject of a ( puppet-show at Bart'lemy fair ' (ib.) ; 
and Shaftesbury ventures to suggest that if the Jews 
had shown their malice seventeen centuries before, not 
by crucifixion, but by ( such puppet-shows as at this 
hour the Papists are acting ' (ib.), they would have 
done much more harm to our religion. 

The evil which lay at the bottom of thsse displays 
was that delusion to which our ancestors gave the 
name of enthusiasm. In appropriating that word 



214 FREETHINKING AND PLA1NSPEAKING. 

exclusively to its nobler meaning, we have lost 
something, though the transformation is insignificant 
of some desirable changes ; for, in truth, enthusiasm, 
as Shaftesbury defines it, is an ugly phenomenon. 
' Inspiration,' he says, 6 is a real feeling of the Divine 
presence, and enthusiasm a false one' (ib. § 7), to 
which he adds significantly that the passions aroused 
are much alike in the two cases. To mistake our 
own impulses for the immediate dictates of our Creator 
is indeed a grievous blunder, and when the mistake 
is made by a passionate and ignorant fanatic, it is 
especially offensive to the man of culture. Shaftesbury, 
however, is careful to point out that enthusiasm was 
not confined to ignorant Dissenters. It supplied also 
the leverage by which the imposing hierarchy of Rome 
forced their dominion upon an unenlightened world. 
Enthusiasm may appeal to the senses as well as the 
spirit. With the marvellous skill which wise men 
have admired, even whilst revolted by its results, the 
priests of that august and venerable Church succeeded 
in turning to account all the weaknesses of mankind. 
Instead of opposing the torrent, they ingeniously 
forced it into their service. To provide for enthu- 
siasm of the loftier kind, they allowed ' their mysticks 
to write and teach in the most rapturous and seraphic 
strains.' (Misc. II. ch. 2.) To the vulgar they 
appealed by temples, statues, paintings, vestments, 
and all the gorgeous pomp of ritual. Allowing a full 
career to all the thaumaturgical juggleries of monks 



SHAFTESBURY'S 'CHARACTERISTICS: 215 

and wandering friars, they also permitted ( ingenious 
writers ' to call these wonders in question c in a civil 
manner.' No wonder, he exclaims, if Rome, the seat 
of a monarchy, resting on foundations laid so deep in 
human nature, appeals to this day to the imagination 
of all spectators, though some are charmed into a desire 
for reunion, whilst others conceive a deadly hatred for 
all priestly dominion. 

Shaftesbury of course belongs to the latter category. 
For this, as for its twin form of enthusiasm, he still 
had recourse to the remedy of ridicule. He main- 
tained as a general principle, and thereby bitterly 
offended many solemn theologians, that raillery was 
the test of truth. Truth, he says, i may bear all 
lights ' ( Wit and Humour, Pt. I. § 1), and one of the 
principal lights is cast by ridicule. He compresses 
into this axiom the theory practically exemplified by 
the Deists and their pupil, Voltaire, and he gives the 
best defence that can be made. Satire, we know, is 
the art of saying everything in a country where it is 
forbidden to say anything. Ridicule is the natural 
retort to tyranny. ( 'Tis the persecuting spirit that 
has raised the bantering one.' (lb. § 4.) The doctrine 
should, perhaps, be qualified. When men are suffi- 
ciently in earnest to fight for their creeds, they are 
too much in earnest for laughter. It is at a later 
period, when the prestige has survived the power, 
when priests bluster but cannot burn, when hetero- 
doxy is still wicked but no longer criminal, that 



216 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

satire may fairly come into play. The dogmas whose 
foundations have been sapped by reason, and are still 
balanced in unstable equilibrium, can be toppled over 
by the shafts of ridicule. Its use is not possible till 
freedom of discussion is allowed, and not becoming 
when free discussion has produced its natural fruit of 
setting all disputants on equal terms. Ridicule clears 
the air and disperses the mists of preconceived preju- 
dices. When they have once vanished, the satirist 
should give place to the calm logician. Shaftesbury, 
though an advocate of the use of ridicule, was, as we 
have said, very unskilful in its application ; nor is he 
to be reckoned amongst the Deists who made an 
unscrupulous use of this rather questionable weapon. 
He does not aim at justifying scoffers, but rather 
desiderates that calm frame of mind which is appro- 
priate to the cultivated critic. In his own dialect, he 
is in favour of c good humour ' rather than of a mock- 
ing humour. ' Good humour is not only the best 
security against enthusiasm,' he tells us, e but the 
best foundation of piety and true religion.' (Enthu- 
siasm, § 3.) Good humour is, in fact, the disposition 
natural to the philosopher when enthusiasm has been 
exorcised from religion. Shaftesbury's ideal, as we 
shall presently see, is a placid and contented attitude 
of thought, resting on a profound conviction that 
everything is for the best, and a perception of the 
deep underlying harmonies which pervade the world. 
The sour fanatic and the bigoted priest are at the 



SHAFTESBURY'S l CHARACTERISTICS: 217 

opposite poles of disturbance, whilst he dwells in the 
temperate latitudes of serene contemplation. He shares 
with the Deists, and, indeed, with all the ablest 
thinkers of his time, with Locke and Clarke, as well 
as with Collins and Tindal, the fundamental dogma 
of the rationalists, the necessity of freedom of dis- 
cussion ; but he wishes for freedom, not to enable him 
to attack the established creeds, but to adapt the 
intellectual atmosphere to a gradual spread of philo- 
sophical sentiment. 

This tendency of Shaftesbury distinguishes him 
from the ordinary Deist. The difference of his 
temper is indeed so marked that Mr. Hunt {Religious 
Thought in England, vol. ii. pp. 342 et seq.) scruples 
to reckon him amongst them. Mr, Hunt is, it seems 
to me, unnecessarily anxious to defend the Deists in 
general from the charge of Deism. It is hardly worth 
asking whether Shaftesbury cared to veneer his rational- 
ism with Christian phraseology or not. As a matter of 
fact, I believe him to have been consciously a Deist ; 
and a comparison of the passages brought together by 
Dr. Spicker will, I think, establish the charge, if it 
must be called a charge. Nothing, however, could 
be farther from his intention than to adopt an attitude 
of unequivocal hostility to that vague body of amiable 
doctrine which was then maintained by the latitudi- 
narian divines, and which, in our days, is reflected in 
what is called ' unsectarian Christianity.' It suited 
his purpose very well ; and so long as priests were 



218 FREE THINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

well under the heel of the secular power, why trouble 
oneself too much about their harmless crotchets ? At 
one place he sets himself to prove three points : first, 
that ' wit and humour are corroborative of religion and 
promotive of true faith ; ' secondly, that they have 
been used by the ( holy founders of religion ; ' and 
thirdly, that i we have, in the main, a witty and good- 
humoured religion.' (Misc. II. ch. iii.) He passes 
with suspicious lightness over the proof of the last 
head; but the phrase, f in the main,' is evidently 
intended to exclude a vast body of doctrine which 
generally passed for orthodox, but which, in his 
opinion, was the product of splenetic fanaticism. So 
long, however, as religion makes no unpleasant demands 
upon him, he will not quarrel with its claims. He 
c speaks with contempt of the mockery of modern 
miracles and inspiration; ' he inclines to regard them all 
as ' mere imposture or delusion ; ' whilst on the miracles 
of past ages he resigns his judgment to his superiors, and 
on all occasions * submits most willingly, and with full 
confidence and trust, to the opinions by law established.' 
(Misc. II. ch. ii.) It would be hard to speak more 
plainly. A miracle which happened 1,700 years ago 
hurt nobody; but any pretence to discovering Divine 
action in the modern world must be rejected with 
contempt as so much imposture. He is quite ready 
to take off his hat to the official idols of the day ; but 
it is on condition of their keeping themselves quiet, 
and working no more miracles. The dogma that 



SHAFTESBURY'S 'CHARACTERISTICS: 219 

miracles have ceased is the best guard against modern 
fanatics and sectaries ; and our belief must rest not 
upon signs and wonders, but on the recognition of 
uniform order throughout the universe. 

With such views, the chief temptation to shock the 
sensibilities of orthodox writers was afforded by the 
Jews. The bare mention of that barbarous and 
enthusiastic race was enough to startle every Deist, 
open or concealed, out of his propriety. They were 
the type of everything that was hateful in his eyes, 
and their language was immovably associated with 
the most recent outbreaks of enthusiasm. The idol of 
the Puritans was the bugbear of the Deists. Shaftes- 
bury hated them with the hatred of Voltaire. When 
writing as a literary critic, his examples of subjects 
totally unsuitable for poetic treatment are taken from 
Scripture history. No poet, as the friend of Bayle 
naturally thinks, could make David interesting. 
e Such are some human hearts that they can hardly 
find the least sympathy with that only one which 
had the character of being after the pattern of the 
Almighty.' {Soliloquy, Pt. III. § 3.) When writing 
as a moralist, again, he illustrates the bad influ- 
ences of superstition as opposed to genuine religion 
from the same fertile source. If in a system 
of worship there is anything ( which teaches men 
treachery, ingratitude, or cruelty, by Divine warrant, 
or under colour and pretence of any present or future 
good to mankind ; if there be anything which teaches 



220 FREETR1NKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

how to persecute their friends through love ; or to 
torment captives of war in sport ; or to offer human 
sacrifice, or to torment, macerate, or mangle them- 
selves, in a religious zeal, before their God ; or to 
commit any sort of barbarity or brutality, as amiable 
or becoming,' such practices, whether sanctioned by 
custom or religion, must remain ( horrid depravity.' 
( Virtue, Book I. Pt. II. § 3.) A deity he presently 
adds, who is furious and revengeful, who punishes 
those who have not sinned, who encourages deceit 
and treachery, and is partial to a few, will generate 
similar vices among his worshippers, (lb. Pt. III. 
§ 2.) The reference to the Jews in these passages, 
sufficiently plain in itself, is more explicitly pointed 
in his subsequent writings. The remark upon human 
sacrifices, for examples, is explained by reference to 
the story of Abraham and Isaac (Misc. II. ch. iii.), 
and the origin of enthusiasm is discovered in priest- 
ridden Egypt, whence it was derived by the servile 
imitation of the Jews. Shaftesbury was certainly 
a Theist; but it is equally plain that he was not a 
worshipper of Jehovah. Whether the form of belief, 
which is generated by effectually purifying Christianity 
from Judaism, Romanism, and supernaturalism, may 
fairly be called Deism, is a question of no great im- 
portance ; whatever its proper name it would roughly 
describe Shaftesbury's religious theories. 

Meanwhile, Shaftesbury was anxious to reconstruct 
as well as to destroy, or at any rate to save from the 



SHAFTESB TJR F'S ' CHAR A CTERISTICS: 221 

wrecks of the old creeds enough to make a tolerable 
refuge for the cultivated human soul. Suppose, he 
says, that we had ' lived in Asia at the time when the 
Magi, by an egregious imposture, had got possession 
of the empire ; ' imagine that their many cheats and 
abuses had made them justly hateful ; but imagine 
further that they had endeavoured to recommend 
themselves by establishing the best possible moral 
maxims : what would be the right course to pursue ? 
(Wit and Humour, Pt. II. § 1.) Would you try to 
destroy both the Magi and their doctrines ; to repu- 
diate every moral and religious principle, every 
natural and social affection, and make men, as much 
as possible, wolves to each other? That, he says, was 
the course pursued by Hobbes, who, both in politics 
and religion, went on the principle of ' magophony,' or 
indiscriminate slaughter of his opponents. The re- 
action against old opinions was carried by that great 
thinker, the man who did more than any other to 
stimulate English thought during the century which 
i followed his death, to an extravagant excess. Shaftes- 
j bury had been profoundly influenced by Hoobes's chief 
opponents, the Cambridge Platonists, and even wrote 
a preface to a volume of sermons published by Which- 
cote, one of their number. His ambition was to confine 
the destructive agency represented by Hobbes within 
due limits, and to preserve what was good in the old 
creed whilst sympathising with the assault upon the 
e Magi,' who had made their own profit out of the 



222 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

perversions of the religious instinct. But how was 
this desirable object to be accomplished? The writers 
who in that age corresponded to the modern Broad 
Churchmen affected a kind of metaphysical theology. 
Clarke, the ablest rationalist amongst the clergy, 
formed his system from the fragments of Des Cartes, 
Spinoza, and Leibnitz. Clarke occupied towards 
them the same position which Dean Mansel occupied 
towards recent German metaphysicians. He hoped to 
soften down their philosophy sufficiently to make it a 
trustworthy servant of Christianity. His chief book 
aims at being a kind of theological Euclid, starting from 
certain primary axioms as to matter, force, and causa- 
tion, and proving the existence and attributes of God 
as Euclid proves the relations between the sides and 
angles of a triangle. Should Shaftesbury associate 
himself with writers of this class ? His cosmopolitan 
training told him that their day was already past. 
Then, as more recently in Germany, metaphysicians 
had erected a vast tower of Babel, intending to scale 
heaven from earth. Like the work of the ancient 
labourers on the plains of Shinar, their ambitious 
edifice was all falling to ruins, and its sole result had 
been to create a jargon detestable to all intelligent 
men. Shaftesbury uniformly speaks of metaphysics 
with a bitter contempt. The study represented to him 
nothing but a set of barren formulae fitted only for the 
pedants of the schools. Their doctrines were, in , the 
German phrase, a mere Hirngespinnst—& flimsy cob- 



SHAFTESBURY'S 'CHARACTERISTICS: 223 

web of the brain. l The philosophers are a sort of 
moonblind wits, who, though very acute and able in 
their way, may be said to renounce daylight ; and 
extinguish, in a manner, the bright visible outside 
world, by allowing us to know nothing besides what 
we can prove by strict and formal demonstrations.' 
{Misc. IV. ch. 2.) He ridicules the philosophical 
speculations about 'formation of ideas,' their com- 
positions, comparisons, agreement and disagreement.' 
{Soliloquy, Pt. III. § 1.) Philosophy, in his sense, 
is nothing but the study of happiness {Moralists, 
III. § 3), and all these discussions as to substances, 
entities, and the eternal and immutable nature of 
things, and pre-established harmonies and occasional 
causes, and primary and secondary qualities, are so 
much empty sound. * The most ingenious way of 
becoming foolish,' as he very truly says, c is by a 
system' {Soliloquy, Pt. III. § 1); and, in truth, the 
systems then existing were rapidly going the way of 
many that had preceded and of many that were to 
follow them. But should Shaftesbury follow the 
thinkers who were preparing their downfall, such as 
his own preceptor Locke, or endeavour to anticipate 
Berkeley and Hume ? From any such attempt he 
was precluded both by his opposition to purely scep- 
tical speculation, and by a want of metaphysical 
acuteness. The first is shown by his condemnation of 
Locke, and the second by the fact that, whilst repu- 



224 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

diating the metaphysical theorists, he really takes from 
them the central support of his own doctrines. 

Thus far we have traced Shaftesbury by his anti- 
pathies. Representing the objects of his enmity by 
modern names, we might compare him to a modern 
thinker who should be opposed to Mr. Mill's expe- 
riential philosophy, to Dean Mansel's adaptation of 
German metaphysics, to Dr. Newman's Catholicism, 
and to Mr. Spurgeon's Protestantism ; who should 
agree with Bishop Colenso's attacks on the letter of 
the Bible, but think them painfully wanting in breadth 
of view ; and who should have been deeply influenced 
by the teaching of Coleridge, and yet have cast it off 
as too reactionary in spirit. Substitute for those 
names Locke, Clarke, Bossuet, the French prophets, 
Collins and Cudworth, and we have a very fair repe- 
tition of Shaftesbury's position. The resemblance 
between the state of opinion then and now is pro- 
bably the cause of the interest still attached by Dr. 
Spicker to Shaftesbury's teachings. 

The deluge is rising higher than of old ; and the 
ark in which later metaphysicians promised to save a 
select few shows ominously symptoms of foundering 
altogether. While it is yet time, cannot we put 
together some raft from the floating wreck, which may 
in time bring us to the new and happier world ? 

Shaftesbury's first effort was to cast overboard 
certain Jonahs in the shape of dogmatic divines. To 
be less metaphorical, he endeavoured to render 



SHAFTESB UJR Y'S ' CHAR A CTERISTICS: 225 

morality independent of the old theology. He opposes 
new theories to the theological conceptions of the 
universe, of human nature, and of motives to virtue. 
A belief in God is indeed an essential part of his 
system ; but the God whom he worships is hardly the 
God of Christians, any more than He is the God of the 
Jews. The belief in justice must, as he urges, precede 
the belief in a just God. ( Virtue, Book I. Part III. 
§ 2.) The right kind of Theism follows from morality, 
not morality from Theism. And thus ' religion ' (by 
which he means a belief in God) ' is capable of doing 
great good or great harm, and Atheism nothing posi- 
tive in either way.' A belief in a bad deity will pro- 
duce bad worshippers, as a belief in a good deity 
produces good ones. Atheism, indeed, implies an 
unhealthy frame of mind, for it means a belief that we 

'' are l living in a distracted universe,' which can pro- 
duce in us no emotions of reverence and love, and thus 
it tends to embitter the temper and impair ( the very 
principle of virtue, natural and kind affection.' (lb. 
Pt. III. § 3.) A belief in God, on the other hand, 
means with Shaftesbury a perception of harmonious 
order, and a mind in unison with the system of which 
it forms a part. Atheism is the discordant, and 
Theism the harmonious, utterance given out by our 
nature according as it is or is not in tune with the 

1 general order. 

If at times he uses language which would fit into 

I an orthodox sermon about a ' personal God ' (see 

Q 

I 



226 FREETHINKINO AND PLA1NSPEAKING. 

Moralists, Pt. IT. § 3), he more frequently seems to 
draw his inspiration from Spinoza. At the bottom of all 
Shaftesbury's eloquence lies the doctrine of optimism, 
which he shares with Leibnitz : ' Whatever is, is 
right,' as Pope expressed the lesson which he perhaps 
learnt from Shaftesbury, or in the phrase of Pangloss, 
f Everything is for the best in this best of all possible 
worlds.' He opens the ( Enquiry into Virtue ' by 
arguing that there is no real ill in the universe. All 
that is apparently ill is the mere effect of our ignorance. 
The weakness of the human infant, for example, is the 
cause of parental affection; and all philanthropical 
impulses are founded on the wants of man. ( What 
can be happier than such a deficiency as is the occa- 
sion of so much good? ' {Moralists, Pt. II. § 4.) If 
there be a supremely good and all-ruling Mind, runs 
his argument, there can be nothing intrinsically bad. 
An inversion of the logic would correspond more 
accurately to his state of mind. He believes in God 
because he will not believe in the reality of evil. The 
Deity gives him the leverage of repelling all ill from 
the world. Christians, it is sometimes said, are forced 
to believe in a Devil as the antithesis of the good 
principle ; they require a scapegoat to bear the re- 
sponsibility of our sins. Shaftesbury abolishes the 
Devil and sin together. He refuses to look at the 
dark side of things, and declares it to be a mere 
illusion. 

In conformity with this view, he expends all his i 






SHAFTESB URY'S < CHARACTERISTICS: 227 

eloquence upon the marvellous beauties of the uni- 
verse. We can perceive, he says, a universal frame of 
things, dimly indeed, and yet clearly enough to throw 
us into ecstasies of adoration. He invokes the Muses, 
and sings prose hymns to nature in the attempt to 
expand the words of Dryden's hymn : — 

From harmony, from heavenly harmony, 

This universal frame began, 

From harmony to harmony 
Through all the compass of the notes it ran, 
The diapason closing full in man. 

Harmony is Shaftesbury's catchword. On that text he 
is never tired of dilating. If in the general current of 
harmony there are some discords, they are to be re- 
solved into a fuller harmony as our intelligence rises. 
If we complain of anything useless in nature, we are 
like men on board a ship in a calm, and ignorant of its 
purpose, who might complain of the masts and sails as 
useless incumbrances. (Moralists, Pt. II. § 4.) He 
dwells, however, less upon metaphors of this kind, which 
suggest Paley's view of the Almighty as a supreme arti- 
ficer, than upon the general order and harmony (for that 
word is never far from his lips) perceptible throughout 
the universe. God, we may almost say, is the harmony, 
though he does not explicitly adopt Pantheism. 
Theocles, the expounder of his theory in ' The Moral- 
ists,' sets forth this view in a set hymn to nature, 
which, in spite of its formalities and old-fashioned 
. defects of style, is at times really eloquent. ' 

q 2 



228 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

mighty nature ! ■ he exclaims, ' wise substitute of 
Providence, empowered creatress ! Or, thou empower- 
ing Deity, supreme Creator ! thee I invoke, and thee 
alone adore ! To thee this solitude, this place, these 
rural meditations are sacred ; whilst thus inspired with 
harmony of thought, though unconfined by words and 
in loose numbers, I sing of nature's order in created 
beings, and celebrate the beauties which resolve in 
thee, the source and principle of all beauty and per- 
fection.' There is beauty in the laws of matter, in 
sense and thought, in the noble universe, in earth, air, 
water, light, in the animal creation, and in natural 
scenery. (Moralists, Pt. III. § 1.) Pope or Words- 
worth — for the two have some points in common — may 
expound his views in rhetorical verse and in lofty 
poetry. We need not pursue him into details. 

From the conception thus expounded, all Shaftes- 
bury's views of morality and religion may be easily 
deduced. His quarrel with the theologians of his 
day rests on far deeper grounds than any mere 
quarrel about Hebrew legends or Christian miracles. 
His objection to belief in the letter of Scripture is a 
corollary from his theory, not its foundation. He is 
radically opposed to the most characteristic doctrines 
of divines. He charges them, in substance, with blas- 
pheming God, the universe, and man. They blas- 
pheme God because they represent Him as angry with 
His creatures, as punishing the innocent for the guilty, 
and appeased by the sufferings of the virtuous. They 



SHAFTESB TJR Y'S i CHAR A CTERISTICS: 229 

blaspheme the universe because, in their zeal to 
' miraculise everything,' they rest the proof of theology 
rather upon the interruptions to order than upon 
order itself. {Moralists, Pt. II. 5.) They paint 
the world in the darkest colours in order to throw a 
future world into relief, and thus, as Bolingbroke 
afterwards put it, the divines are in tacit alliance with 
the Atheists. Make the universe a scene of hideous 
chaos, and is not the inference that there is no God 
more legitimate than the inference that a God exists 
to provide compensation somewhere? Shaftesbury's 
view may be compared with Butler's, whose writings 
bear the strongest traces of his influence. Shaftes- 
bury, like Butler, insists upon the necessity of 
regarding the universe as a half-understood scheme. 
We cannot, he says, understand the part without a 
competent knowledge of the whole. The spider is 
made for the fly, and the fly for the spider. The 
web and the wing are related to each other. To 
understand the leaf one must go to the root. ( Vir- 

, tue, Book I. Pt. II. § 1.) Every naturalist must 

I understand the organisation in order to explain the 
organs. (Moralists, Pt. II. § 4.) But in Butler's 

> view, the world of sense is imperfect and unintelligible 
except as a preparation for a future world. Earth is 

j the ante-room to heaven and hell. It is the seed-plot 
of the harvest that can only be reaped in eternity. If 
man, to adopt Shaftesbury's familiar illustration, is 
the fly, the Devil is the spider. In Shaftesbury's 



230 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAK1NG. 

view, on the other hand, there is no Devil and no 
spider beyond the limits of the universe. The world 
is a complete whole in itself. The harmony is per- 
fect without the chorus of angels. The planets sing 
as they shine, e the hand that made us is Divine ; ' but 
they do not require the interpretation of a supernatural 
revelation. The Divinity, he thought, had been 
exiled from the universe, and it was his purpose to 
reclaim for the world around us the treasures of 
beauty which divines had removed to heaven. 

But, most of all, the divines had blasphemed man. 
The dogmas which assert the corruption of our nature 
are radically opposed to Shaftesbury's theory. Here, 
again, the same delusion was to be encountered. In 
their zeal to vindicate God, the divines had pronounced 
all our own qualities to be essentially vile. They had 
given our virtues to God, and left us merely the 
refuse of selfishness and sensuality. This is the ex- 
planation from another side of his doctrine of enthusiasm. 
You call your own impulses Divine inspiration, he says 
in effect, when they are essentially human. With an 
affectation of self-abasement you are really indulging 
in blasphemous arrogance. The delusions from which 
you suffer are the natural effect of the misconception. 
God has endowed man with his virtuous as well as 
with his indifferent and his vicious impulses. By 
arbitrarily dividing humanity, you fall into abject 
superstition, for you are as apt to make your God 
out of the vicious as of the virtuous qualities. Virtue 



SHAFTESB UR Y'S ' CHAR A CTERISTICS: 231 

itself becomes a mere form of selfishness ; for the vile 
creature must be moved by base motives. Heaven 
and hell are modes of appealing to self-interest. 
Shaftesbury, indeed, does not explicitly deny the ex- 
istence of a hell, or, at least, he does not deny that a 
belief in hell has its advantages — for the vulgar. But 
he labours energetically to show that hopes and fears 
of a future state are so far from being the proper 
motive to virtue, that they are rather destructive of 
its essential character. Not only may such weapons 
be pressed into the service of an evil deity, but they 
are radically immoral. The man who obeys the law 
under threats is no better than the man who breaks 
it when at liberty. i There is no more of rectitude, 
piety, or sanctity in a creature thus reformed than 
there is of meekness or gentleness in a tiger strongly 
chained, or innocence and sobriety in a monkey under 
the discipline of the whip.' The greater the obedience, 
the greater the servility. The habit of acting from 
such motives strengthens self-love, and discourages the 
disinterested love of God for His own sake. ( Vir- 
tue, Book I. Pt. III. § 3.) In short, 'the excellence 
of the object, not the reward or punishment, should be 
our motive,' though, where the higher motive is in- 
adequate, the lower may be judiciously brought in 
aid. (Moralists, Pt. II. § 3.) ' A devil and a hell,' 
he elsewhere puts it, i may prevail where a gaol and 
gallows are thought insufficient ; ' but such motives, 
he is careful to add, are suitable to the vulgar, not to 



232 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

the ( liberal, polished, and refined part of mankind/ 
who are apt to show that they hold such e pious narra- 
tions to be indeed no better than children's tales or 
the amusement of the mere vulgar.' (Misc. III. 
ch. ii.) Hell, in short, is a mere outpost on the fron- 
tiers of virtue, erected by judicious persons to restrain 
the vulgar and keep us from actual desertion, but not 
an animating and essential part of the internal discip- 
line. The doctrine of hell, in the hands of vulgar 
expositors, implies a belief in the utter selfishness of 
mankind. We are essentially vicious ( tigers ' or 
e monkeys,' to be kept in awe by the chain and the 
whip. The cynics of the time, of whom Mandeville 
was the most prominent representative, accepted this 
theory of human nature, whilst abolishing the doctrine 
founded upon it. In their view, expanded into a 
philosophy by Hobbes, the arch-enemy, and crystallised 
into maxims by Rochefoucauld, man was selfish, and 
all his virtues mere modifications of selfishness. Man- 
deville tried to show that public spirit, honour, chas- 
tity, and benevolence were simply vices in disguise. 
They were not the less useful because founded on 
hypocrisy, but they were mere hollow shows. Shaftes- 
bury's attack upon this doctrine was that which chiefly 
commended him to his contemporaries. They would 
accept even a Deist as an ally against a deadlier 
enemy. The term e moral sense,' which he invented 
to explain his doctrines, was turned to account by his 
successors. Hutcheson worked up the theory with 



SHAFTESB TRY'S' CHAR A CTERISTICS: 233 

little alteration into an elaborate system. In Butler 
the moral sense is transformed into a conscience, a word 
more appropriate to his theological conceptions. Hart- 
ley tried to explain the moral faculty by the laws of 
association, and Adam Smith by resolving it into sym- 
pathy. In one shape or another it played an impor- 
tant part in the controversies of the century. For, in 
fact, when the old supports of morality were falling into 
decay, men naturally attached supreme importance to 
a bold assertion of the truth, that benevolence is not a 
cold-blooded calculation of our private interests. Shaftes- 
bury was the leader in the struggle againstthat grovelling 
form of utilitarianism. Without tracing the connection 
of ideas more elaborately, it is enough to refer to the 
passage in which Shaftesbury gives his own view 
most pointedly. His writings are everywhere full of 
the same doctrine. Should anyone ask me, he says, 
why I would avoid being nasty when nobody was 
present, I should think him a very nasty gentleman 
to ask the question. If he insisted, I should reply, 
Because I have a nose. If he continued, What if you 
could not smell ? I should reply that I would not see 
myself nasty. But if it was in the dark ? ' Why, 
even then, though I had neither nose nor eyes, my 
sense of the matter would still be the same : my nature 
would rise at the thoughts of what was sordid ; or if 
it did not, I should have a wretched nature indeed, 
and hate myself for a beast.' (Se?isus Communis, 
Pt. III. § 4.) 



234 FREETHINKING AND PLA1NSPEAKING. 

Our hatred to vice, in short, is a primitive instinct. 
Shaftesbury, indeed, is rather apt to cut the knot. 
As he summarily denies the existence of evil, he is 
almost inclined to deny the real existence of vicious 
propensities ; and he rather shirks than satisfactorily 
answers the difficulty arising from the possible collision 
between interest and virtue. He declares roundly 
that it does not exist. ' To be wicked or vicious is to 
be miserable ; ■ and i every vicious action must be 
self-injurious and ill.' Why, then, one is disposed to 
ask, is virtue so hard ? But, indeed, to be an optimist 
one must learn the lesson of how to shut one's eyes. 

Shaftesbury's theory, however, falls in with his 
general system. What, after all, is this moral sense 
of which he speaks ? What are the special actions 
which it approves ? How do we know that its 
approval is final ? What is the criterion of morality, 
and what the sanctions which, in fact, oblige us to 
obey its dictates ? Shaftesbury's reply, though vague 
and unsatisfactory enough, gives the kernel of his 
theory. The moral sense is merely a particular case 
of that sense by which we perceive the all-pervading 
harmony. That harmony, as revealed to our imagi- 
nation, produces the sense of the beautiful ; as partially 
apprehended by our reason, it produces philosophy ; 
and as embodied in the workings of human nature, it 
gives rise to the moral sense. 

The aesthetic and the moral perceptions are the 
same, the only difference being in the object to which 



SHAFTESB UR Y'S l CHARA CTERISTICS: 235 

they are applied. ( Beauty and good, with you, 
Theocles,' he says, ( are still one and the same.' 
{Moralists, Pt. III. § 2.) Or, as he says elsewhere, 
' What is beautiful is harmonious and proportionable ; 
what is harmonious and proportionable is true ; and 
what is at once both beautiful and true, is of con- 
sequence agreeable and good.' (Misc. III. ch. 2.) 
One consequence follows, from which Shaftesbury 
does not shrink. If the good and the beautiful are 
the same, the faculty of moral approbation is the same 
faculty which judges of the fine arts. We recognise 
a hero as we recognise a poet or a painter. And thus 
Shaftesbury's last word is, Cultivate your taste. 
Criticism is of surpassing importance in his eyes, 
because criticism is the art of forming accurate judg- 
ments, whether of religion, or art, or morality. He 
divides human passions into the natural affections, 
which lead to the good of the public ; the e self- 
affections, which lead only to the good of the private ; ' 
and those which, as simply injurious, may be called 
the 'unnatural affections.' ( Virtue, Book II. Pt. I. 
§3.) To eliminate the last, and to establish a just 
harmony between the others, is the problem of the 
moralist; and he will judge of the harmonious de- 
velopment of a man as a critic would judge of the 
harmony of a painting or a piece of music. Man, 
again, can be fully understood only as part of the 
great human family. He will be in harmony with 
his race when so developed as to contribute in the 



236 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

greatest degree to the general harmony. He is a 
member of a vast choir, and must beat out his part 
in the general music. Hence he dwells chiefly on 
the development of the benevolent emotions, though 
explicitly admitting that they may be sometimes 
developed in excess. The love of humanity, however, 
must be the ruling passion. He meets the objection 
— one often made to Comte — that one may love the 
individual but not the species, which is f too meta- 
physical an object' (Moralists, II. § 1), by main- 
taining that to be a ( friend to anyone in particular it 
is necessary to be first a friend to mankind.' (lb. § 2.) 
He has been in love, he says, with the people of 
ancient Home in many ways, but specially under the 
symbol of ' a beautiful youth called the Genius of the 
People.' Make such a figure of mankind or nature, 
and he will regard it with equal affection. The full 
answer to the difficulty is given in the hymn to nature, 
already noticed. 

Amongst various comments upon Shaftesbury, this 
part of his system was selected for special attack. 
The moralists, generally known as the Intellectual 
school, maintained that it made all morality arbitrary. 
Price, for example, in his system of morality, argues 
that as there is no disputing about tastes, a moral 
theory which rests upon taste would allow of an 
infinite variety of fluctuating standards. Shaftesbury 
had anticipated and endeavoured to refute the ob- 
jection. He declared that the maxims drawn from 



SHAFTESBURY'S ' CHARACTERISTICS: 237 

political theories as to the balance of power were f as 
evident as those in mathematics ' ( Wit and Humour, 
Pt. III. § 1), and inferred that moral maxims founded 
on a proper theory of the balance of passions would 
be equally capable of rigid demonstration. The 
harmony of which he spoke had an objective reality, 
and did not reside in the ear of the hearer. The 
cultivation of the moral sense was necessary to enable 
us to catch its Divine notes ; but the judgment of all 
cultivated observers would ultimately be the same. 
If a writer on music were to say that the rule of 
harmony was caprice, he would be ridiculous. s Har- 
mony is harmony by nature, let men judge ever so 
ridiculously of music' Symmetry and proportion are 
equally founded in nature, [ let men's fancy prove ever 
so barbarous or their fashions ever so Gothic in their 
architecture, sculpture, or other designing art. 'Tis 
the same case where life and manners are concerned. 
Virtue has the same fixed standard. The same 
numbers, harmony and proportion, will have place in 
morals ; and are discoverable in the character and 
affections of mankind ; in which are laid the just 
foundations of our art and science, superior to every 
other of human practice and comprehension.' (Soli- 
loquy, Pt. III. § 3.) Shaftesbury is, in his own 
language, a ' realist ' in his Theism and his morality. 
Virtue is a reality, and can be discovered by all 
who will go through the necessary process of self- 
culture. 



238 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKWG. 

Shaftesbury's half-aristocratic and half-philosophical 
scorn for the grovelling theories of his time has in it 
a strain of generous indignation. Those who retained 
the old supernatural machinery, and those who, whilst 
rejecting it, yet retained the correlative corruptions 
of human nature, alike deserved a rebuke. Man, 
doubtless, is not a mass of corruption, whose good 
instincts can only be supported by the lash of external 
terrors, or are themselves mere masks adapted for 
mutual deception. To admit that religion comes from 
within, and not from the intervention of some outward 
power, is to raise the dignity and self-respect of man- 
kind. Shaftesbury's position that the good instincts 
are natural is, therefore, logically connected with the 
development of a wider and loftier theology than the 
old. The praise which has been lavished upon Butler, 
for his denial that all virtue could be resolved into 
self-interest, should be in fact reserved for his teacher. 
In truth, that denial falls in better with Shaftesbury's 
system ; Butler not only speaks with hesitation and 
endeavours, as he puts it, e to make every possible 
concession to the favourite passion ' of self-love, but 
his conception of the universe is favourable to a 
saddened view of its inhabitants. Man, indeed, may 
have some capacity for self-denial and for unrequited 
benevolence ; but the chief motive to self-denial is the 
utter worthlessness of the pleasures to be abandoned ; 
and the rewards and penalties, though not the sole cause 
of motive, are so tremendous as almost to obliterate any 



SHAFTESBURY'S ' CHARACTERISTICS' 239 

feebler motives. Man, shivering at the brink of 
hell, and tremblingly hoping for the joys of heaven, 
remembering always that his brief existence here is but 
a momentary prelude to a state of infinite and eternal 
joys or pains ; conscious always that he is in presence 
of an inexorable judge, who reaps where he did not 
sow and gathers where he has not strawed ; this 
shrinking, trembling criminal can have little power of 
distracting his mind from his own tremendous doom. 
It is not when waiting for a sentence of life and death 
that we can take much unselfish interest in our fellow- 
sufferers. Shaftesbury's ideal philosopher, feeling 
that his own nature is in some sense divine, despising 
all external motives as mere phantoms for terrifying 
the vulgar, has a better right to claim the merit of 
independent sympathy for his race. It is an emotion, 
not prompted nor commanded from without, but 
springing naturally in the human breast, which is 
in some sort the dwelling-place of the Divine essence. 
But, from another point of view, Butler's doctrine, 
if not so philosophical, at least attracts a deeper sym- 
pathy. It embodies the sentiment to which all the 
great poets and the great teachers of our race owe a 
main part of their power. f Our sweetest songs are 
those which tell of saddest thought; ' for how should we 
not be stirred most profoundly by those who have felt 
most deeply the weight of sin and suffering and the 
ephemeral duration of human joy and suffering? 
Poetry is but too often the fragrance given out by a 



240 FREETHINKING AND PLA1NSPEAKING. 

sensitive nature crushed under the hard wheels of this 
world ; and the poet's skill consists in blending the 
inevitable melancholy with some more elevating and 
inspiring moods, and bringing harmony out of pain. 
Butler's sombre musings are more impressive than 
Shaftesbury's easy-going optimism. Shaftesbury re- 
minds us too often of Hotspur's fop. Standing amidst 
the relics of the desperate struggle of this life, amongst 
the carnage and shrieks of the wounded and the brutal 
triumph of the conquerors, he finds a solace in his 
elegant smelling bottle, skilfully compounded of the 
best philosophical essences. His morality may do for 
the ' virtuoso ' or the fine gentleman, not for the poor 
private, mangled and struck down by the victorious 
powers of evil. He quietly abandons hell to the 
vulgar, and would half applaud the sentiment about 
God thinking twice before damning a person of 
quality. For the abolition, indeed, of a supernatural 
hell, one would have small fault to find with him, but 
can we thus placidly dismiss the hell which is around 
us ; the hell of remorse, of sorrow, and of helpless 
pain ? To fight against evil, where evil can be 
conquered, to resign ourselves to the evil which is 
inevitable, is our great duty in life ; blandly to deny 
its existence is not the way to victory. 

Shaftesbury's error, is, however, a natural conse- 
quence of his system, though his personal peculiarities, 
his position as a nobleman and a ' virtuoso,' bring 
it into additional relief. He would find God in 



SHAFTESBURY'S ' CHARACTERISTICS: 241 

nature. Butler, finding nature to be full of horrors, 
makes God the source of much that is terrible. 
Shaftesbury assumes that, as nature is divine, all 
that is natural must be worthy of adoration. God, 
when regarded as the universal creator of all things 
and all men, is still to retain the attributes of good- 
ness, wisdom, and power. How, then, account for evil ? 
It is the old problem; and Shaftesbury attempts to 
solve it chiefly by evasion. He gets rid of some evils 
by calling them unnatural. But is not this to restore 
the old distinction over again ? Does not God at 
once become the God of a part, not of the whole, and 
therefore an interfering and not an all-pervading 
power ? How are we to know what is and what is 
not unnatural ? If God makes all things, why does 
He not sanction vice as well as virtue ? This is the 
real meaning of the attacks made by other moralists 
upon Shaftesbury's ethical system. Admit a God 
who is, strictly speaking, the universal source of every- 
thing, and His will can no longer be the code of 
morality ; He must be supposed to will the bad as well 
as the good, for the existence of anything proves it 
to be in accordance with His will. To resist Him is 
not wrong, but impossible. Shaftesbury attempts to 
answer by appealing to the universal harmony. But 
these fluent metaphors fail to give us any definite 
standard. What is this harmony ? Is there, after 
all, any such harmony ? Is not discord written on the 
face of creation with equal distinctness ? Shaftesbury 

R 



242 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

resolutely sees harmony everywhere ; but surely it is 
difficult to discover. In this painful world, Candide 
will get the better of Pangloss. 

There are hideous things in the world which cannot 
be hid from sight or left out of our account in drawing 
up schemes of morality. Poverty, and starvation, and 
disease may be blessings in disguise, but the disguise 
will last our time. To say that they are not real 
evils, is useless for Shaftesbury's purpose. We have to 
assume their reality, whether or not we may be able 
to discover some day that they are ultimately mere 
shams. Nobody in grief or serious temptation would 
be influenced by Shaftesbury's plausible philosophising. 
To the statement that there cannot be evil, they 
reply only too confidently there is. The error into 
which Shaftesbury falls is something like the ordinary 
misconceptions of Berkeley's theory. Because there 
is said to be no such thing as substance, we are to 
knock our heads against a post. Because there is no 
cure for evil in Shaftesbury's metaphysical system, we 
are to act in this world of hard facts as if it were a 
mere fancy. It is better to take things as they are, 
and make the best of them without vain repinings in 
an equally vain attempt to retreat into a dreamland of 
philosophy. 




243 



CHAPTER VII. 



The most complete antithesis of Shaftesbury was 
Bernard de Mandeville, author of the ' Fable of the 
Bees.' Between them the two writers give a very 
fair summary of the ethical tendencies of the eighteenth 
century freethinkers in England. They are treated 
as joint opponents of orthodoxy in several controversial 
writings of the times, as, for example, in Berkeley's 
6 Minute Philosopher,' in a very able essay on the 
( Characteristics ' by John Brown, better known as 
the author of the ( Estimate,' and in that amorphous 
mass of dissertation which Warburton called a 
' Demonstration of the Divine Legation of Moses.' 

i Their theories are the Scylla and Charybdis between 
which it was a delicate matter to steer a straight 
course. Agreeing in refuting the teaching of divines, 

\ they are at the opposite poles of speculation i n all 
else; and it was some consolation to the orthodox 

1 The Fable of the Bees ; or, Private Vices Public Benefits : with 
an Essay on Charity and Charity-schools, and a Search into the Nature 
iof Society, &c. London, 1806. 

b 2 



244 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAK1NG. 

that two such enemies of the faith might be, more or 
less, trusted to neutralise each other. Their relations 
to each other and to their common enemies illustrate 
some of the problems which were then agitating men's 
minds. The agitation has not quite subsided. 

Mandeville published the tf Fable of the Bees ' in 
1714, three years after the appearance of the 6 Charac- 
teristics.' It opens with a doggrel poem, setting forth 
that a hive of bees, once thriving and vicious, lost its 
prosperity together with its vice on a sudden refor- 
mation. A line or two from the conclusion gives the 
pith of the doctrine : 

Then leave complaints : fools only strive 
To make a great an honest hive — 
To enjoy the world's conveniences, 
Be famed in war, yet live in ease, 
Without great vices, is a vain 
Utopia, seated in the brain. 

A comment follows expounding this cynical theory 
in detail. In subsequent editions, for the e Fable ' 
enjoyed a wide popularity for many years, were added 
various explanations and defences of the doctrine. 
In 1723 the book was presented as a nuisance by the 
Grand Jury of Middlesex. Observing, says that 
respectable body, with the f greatest sorrow and 
concern,' the many books published almost every week 
by impious and licentious writers, whose ' principles 
have a direct tendency to the subversion of all religion 
and civil government, our duty to the Almighty, our 
love to our country, and regard to our oaths, oblige us 



MANDEVILLE' S < FABLE OF THE BEES: 245 

to present ' the publisher of the i Fable of the Bees,' 
and thereby, as it would appear, to give him a useful 
advertisement. 

No harm followed to Mandeville in person. His 
reputation, however, was gibbeted in all the respectable 
writings of the day ; his name became a bye-word, 
and his book was regarded as a kind of pothouse 
edition of the arch-enemy Hobbes. The indignation 
was not unnatural. Mandeville is said to have been 
in the habit of frequenting coffee-houses and amusing 
his patrons by ribald conversation. The book smells 
of its author's haunts. He is a cynical and prurient 
writer, who shrinks from no jest, however scurrilous, 
and from no paradox, however grotesque, calculated 
to serve the object — which he avows in his preface to 
be his sole object — of amusing his readers ; readers, it 
may be added, far from scrupulous in their tastes. 
And yet, with all Mandeville's brutality, there runs 
through his pages a vein of shrewd sense which gives 
a certain pungency to his rough assaults on the decent 
theories of life. Nay, there are many remarks in- 
dicative of some genuine philosophical acuteness. A 
hearty contempt for the humbugs of this world, and 
a resolution not to be blinded by its professions, are 
not in themselves bad things. When, indeed, a man 
includes amongst the humbugs everything which 
passes with others for virtue and purity, his teaching 
is repulsive ; though, even in such a case, we may 
half forgive a writer like Swift, whose bitterness 



246 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

proves that he has not parted from his illusions without 
a cruel pang. Mandeville shares Swift's contempt 
for the human race, but his contempt, instead of urging 
him to the confines of madness, finds easy vent in a 
horse-laugh. He despises himself as well as his 
neighbours, and is content to be despicable. He is a 
scoffer, not a misanthrope. You are all Yahoos, he 
seems to say, and I am a Yahoo ; and so — let us eat, 
drink, and be merry. 

Mandeville's view of the world is thus the reverse 
of the superfine philosophy of Shaftesbury. For the 
dignified he substitutes the bestial theory of human 
nature; and in perfect consistency he speaks with 
bitter ridicule of his opponent. ' Two systems,' he 
says, c cannot be more opposite than his lordship's and 
mine ' (p. 205). ( The hunting after this pulchrum et 
hone stum J which with Lord Shaftesbury should be the 
sole object of human life, f is not much better than a 
wild-goose chase' (p. 210); and if we come to facts, 
' there is not a quarter of the wisdom, solid knowledge, 
and intrinsic worth in the world that men talk of and 
compliment one another with ; and of virtue and 
religion there is not an hundredth part in reality of 
what there is in appearance ' (p. 508). The frankness 
with which this opinion is uttered, is rarer than the 
opinion itself. Mandeville is but a coarse and crude 
interpreter of a doctrine which is not likely to dis- 
appear for want of disciples. He prides himself on 
being a shrewd man of the world, whose experience 



MANDEVILLE'S 'FABLE OF THE BEES: 247 

has amply demonstrated the folly of statesmen and the 
hypocrisy of churchmen, and from whom all that 
beautiful varnish of flimsy philosophy with which we 
deceive each other is unable to cover the vileness of 
the underlying materials. He will not be beguiled 
from looking at the seamy side of things. Man, as 
theologians tell us, is corrupt: nay, it would be 
difficult for them to exaggerate his corruption ; but 
the heaven which they throw in by way of consolation 
is tacitly understood to be a mere delusion, and the 
supernatural guidance to which they bid us trust, an 
ingenious device for enforcing their own authority. 
Tell your fine stories, he says in effect, to school-girls 
or to devotees ; don't try to pass them off upon me, 
who have seen men and cities, and not taken my 
notions from books or sermons. There is a part of our 
nature which is always flattered by the bold assertion 
that our idols are made of dirt ; and Mandeville was 
a sagacious sycophant of those baser instincts. 

The paradox which has given his book its chief 
notoriety is that which is summed up in the alternative 
title, l Private vices, public benefits.' The fallacy 
- which lies at the base of his economical sophistries is, 
; one might suppose^ sufficiently transparent ; and yet 
it not only puzzled the ablest thinkers of the day, but 
; enjoys a permanent popularity. In slightly altered 
forms it is constantly reappearing, and repeated con- 
futation never seems to kill it at the root. The doc- 
, trine is, in general terms, that consumption instead of 



248 FREETH1NKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

saving is beneficial to labourers. Mandeville exhausts 
bis ingenuity in exhibiting it in the most extravagant 
shapes. ' It is,' he declares, 6 the sensual courtier 
that sets no limits to his luxury ; the fickle strumpet 
that invents new fashions every week ; the haughty 
duchess that in equipage, entertainments, and all her 
behaviour would imitate a princess ; the profuse rake 
and lavish heir, that scatter about their money without 
wit or judgment, buy everything they see, and either 
destroy or give it away the next day ; the covetous 
and perjured villain, that squeezed an immense 
treasure from the tears of widows and orphans, and 
left the prodigals the money to spend ; it is these 
that are the proper food of the full-grown Leviathan ; ' 
we require them in order to set all varieties of labour 
to work, and ( to procure an honest livelihood to the 
vast numbers of working poor that are required to 
make a large society ' (p. 227). The doctrine, how- 
ever extravagantly stated, is only a logical develop- 
ment of that which is put forward whenever a body 
of labourers is thrown out of work by a change of 
fashion. Nobody would now commend actual vice, 
but we have quite recently seen a defence of luxury 
on the ground that it employs labour. The ( sensual 
courtier,' indeed, is not excused, but the rich noble 
who lives in superfluous state is exhorted to lay to his 
soul the flattering unction that he is providing em- 
ployment for the tradesmen who supply his wants. 
Political economists have shown the fallacy of such 



MANDEVILLE'S 'FABLE OF THE BEES: 249 

arguments ; but their refutation is constantly regarded 
as a gratuitous paradox. 

The sophistry is, indeed, forced to conceal itself more 
carefully at the present day ; for Mandeville delights 
in following it with perverse ingenuity to its furthest 
consequences. He pronounces the Reformation to 
have been scarcely more efficacious in promoting the 
national prosperity than i the silly and capricious in- 
vention of hooped and quilted petticoats ' (p. 228). 
s Religion,' he adds, l is one thing, and trade is another. 
He that sfives most trouble to thousands of his neiorh- 
bours and invents the most operose manufactures is, 
right or wrong, the greatest friend to society.' Kay, 
he manages to cap these extravagancies by arguing 
that even the destruction of capital may be useful. 
' The Fire of London was a great calamity, but if the 
carpenters, bricklayers, smiths,' and others set at work, 
e were to vote against those who lost by the fire, the 
rejoicings would equal if not exceed the complaints ' 
(p. 230). Foolish paradoxes, it may be said, and 
useful at most in so far as an extravagant statement 
of a foolish theory may help to bring about its col- 
lapse. And yet the writer who expounded such 
glaring absurdities was capable of occasionally attack- 
ing a commercial fallacy with great success, and of 
anticipating the views of later and more eminent 
authorities. Thus, for example, though he cannot 
shake himself free from the superstition that the 
imports of a nation should not be allowed to exceed 



250 FREETH1NKING AND PLAINS PEAKING. 

the exports, he attacks certain current theories upon 
the subject by arguments which only require further 
extension to lead to a sound conclusion ; and he illus- 
trates the advantages of division of labour, not, indeed, 
with the felicity of Adam Smith, but in such a way as 
to show an apprehension of the principle at least 
equally clear. Mandeville, in fact, is not a mere 
dealer in absurdities. He has overlaid a very sound 
and sober thesis with paradoxes in which probably he 
only half believed. When formally defending himself, 
he can represent his arguments as purely ironical. 
He confesses, in a vindication against the Grand 
Jury, that he has stated in plain terms ( that what we 
call evil in this world, moral as well as natural, is the 
grand principle that makes us sociable creatures ; the 
solid basis, the life and support of all trades and 
employments without exception ; that there we must 
look for the true origin of all arts and sciences ; and 
that the moment the evil ceases, society must be 
spoiled if not totally dissolved ' (p. 248). The phrase, 
he admits, has an awkward sound ; but had he been 
writing for persons unable to read between the lines, 
he would have explained in good set terms that his 
only meaning was that ' every want was an evil ; that 
on the multiplicity of those wants depended all those 
mutual services which individual members of society 
pay to each other, and that consequently the greater 
variety there was of wants, the larger number of in- 
dividuals might find their private interest in labouring 



MAKDEVILLE'S < FABLE OF THE BEES.' 251 

for the good of others, and united together compose 
one body ' (p. 257). The streets of London, according 
to his own illustration, will grow dirtier as long as 
trade increases (Preface, p. viii.); and to make his 
pages attractive, he had expressed this doctrine as 
though he took the dirt to be the cause instead of the 
necessary consequence of the wealth. The fallacy, 
indeed, is too deeply embedded in his argument to be 
discarded in this summary fashion. The doctrine that 
the heir who scatters, and not the miser who accu- 
mulates savings, really sets labour at work, was so 
much in harmony with the ideas of that age, that even 
Berkeley's acuteness could suggest no better answer 
than the statement that an honest man generally 
consumes more than a knave. There is, however, a 
core of truth in the sophistry. Large expenditure is 
an evil so far as it indicates that consumption is out- 
running accumulation ; it may be called a good sign 
so far as it indicates that large accumulations render 
large consumption possible. Mandeville, confusing 
the two cases, attacks in the same breath the frugal 
Dutchman who saves in order to supply future wants, 
and the savage who, consuming little, yet consumes all 
that he produces, and produces little because he has 
no tastes and feels no wants. As against the savage 
his remarks are correct enough. The growth of new 
desires is clearly an essential condition towards the 
improvement of society, and every new desire brings 
new evils in its train. Indeed, there is only too much 



252 FREETHINK1NG AND PL AIX SPEAKING. 

to be said for the theory, when thus stripped of its 
paradoxical dress. The streets of London, to say 
nothing of the streets of New York, grow most un- 
deniably diriy as a fuller stream of commerce flows 
through them, and leaves behind its questionable 
deposits. An increased cultivation of wheat is also 
unpleasantly favourable to the growth of tares ; and 
it is in vain that our economical optimists repudiate 
all responsibility for the evils which inevitably ac- 
company the blessings they promise. If, however, 
Mandeville had confined himself to this modest asser- 
tion, he would have fallen into the ordinary jog-trot 
of the moralists who denounce an excessive passion 
for wealth. It was pleasanter and more exciting to 
give a different turn to his doctrine. To make an 
omelette you must break eggs ; don't deny in words 
what you preach by practice ; admit frankly that 
the gain is worth the mischief; and it is but a step 
farther to say that the mischief is the cause of the 
gain. 

The moral side of this edifying doctrine involves 
a similar ambiguity. Mandeville may be described 
as accepting the alternative forced upon us by ascetic 
moralists. Worldliness, they say, is vice ; let us 
therefore abandon the world. We won't and can't 
abandon the world, replies Mandeville ; let us be 
vicious and be candidly vicious. Accept in all sin- 
cerity the doctrine of contempt for wealth, with the 
fundamental theorem on which it reposes, that the 



MANDEVILLE'S < FABLE OF THE BEES: 253 

natural passions are bad ; and we should be virtuous 
and barbarous. Accumulation of wealth, as the later 
economists tell us, is the natural base of all the virtues 
of civilisation, and the industrial view of morality is 
therefore opposed fundamentally to the views of 
certain orthodox preachers. Mandeville's paradox 
is produced by admitting with the divines that the 
pursuit of wealth is radically vicious, and by arguing 
with the economists that it is essential to civilisation. 
Luxury, according to his definition, should in strict- 
ness include everything that is not essential to the 
existence of a naked savage. Hence the highest con- 
ceivable type of virtue should be found in religious 
houses, whose inmates have bound themselves by 
rigid vows of chastity and poverty to trample the flesh 
under foot; or rather it would be found there if 
monks and nuns did not cover the vilest sensuality 
under a mask of hypocrisy, an opinion which has been 
confirmed by the evidence of s many persons of emi- 
nence and learning ' (p. 87). He would subscribe to 
Dr. Newman's opinion that in the humble monk and 
the holy nun are to be found the true Christians after 
the Scripture pattern, if he could believe that holiness 
and humility were ever more than shams. Now the 
ideal of a Trappist monk is plainly incompatible with 
the development of an industrious community. 

From the same theory follows logically the denial 
of the name of virtue to every practice which is 
prompted by natural instinct. Thus, for example, the 



254 FREETHINKING AND PLAINS PEAKING. 

force of maternal love appears to the ordinary moralist 
to be one of the most beautiful of human instincts. 
Mandeville, with perverse ingenuity, twists it into a 
proof that all virtue is factitious. You cry out, he 
says, with horror at the woman who commits infan- 
ticide. But the same woman who murders her ille- 
gitimate child may show the utmost tenderness to her 
lawful offspring. As a murderess and as a good 
mother she is equally actuated by the self-love which 
is really the spring of all our actions. The murder is 
produced by a sense of shame; destroy the shame, and 
you suppress the crime ; the most dissolute women are 
scarcely ever guilty of this sin. A mother's love is 
produced not by any force of principle, but by the 
operation of natural instincts. The ' vilest women 
have exerted themselves on this head as violently as 
the best' (p. 35). Now s there is no merit in pleasing 
ourselves,' and, indeed, an excessive love for children is 
often their ruin, which shows that it is prompted by a 
desire for our own welfare and not for the happiness 
of our children. Imagine yourself, he suggests, to be 
locked up in a room looking upon a yard through a 
grated window ; suppose that you saw in it a pretty 
child of two or three years at play ; and that a ( nasty 
overgrown sow' (p. 156), came in and frightened the 
poor child out of its wits. You would do all you 
could to frighten it away. But if the overgrown sow, 
being in a famished condition, were to proceed to tear 
the helpless infant to pieces, whilst you looked on 



MANDEVILLE'S * FABLE OF THE BEES. 3 255 

without the power to interfere, none of the passions 
vaunted by moralists would equal your sensations of 
pity and indignation. What is the inference ? That 
there would be no need of virtue or self-denial to be 
moved at such a scene, and that not only a humane 
man, but a highwayman, a housebreaker, or a murderer 
would feel the same. This pity, therefore, is a mere 
counterfeit of charity. It comes in through the eye 
or ear ; and if we read of three or four hundred men 
being killed or drowned at a distance, we are not 
really more moved than at a tragedy. Eeason would 
tell us to grieve equally for the sufferings which we 
see and for those which we do not see 5 but the 
vehement emotion of pity is only caused by the painful 
objects which immediately assail our senses. It is the 
rising of the gorge at an offensive sight, not a deep- 
seated intellectual motive. In the same spirit, he 
argues with offensive coarseness that modesty is merely 
a sham. e Virtue bids us subdue, but good breeding 
only requires that we should conceal our appetites ' 
(p. 33). Good breeding involves no self-denial ; but 
only teaches us to gratify our sensuality according to 
the custom of the country ; and a man may wallow in 
all kinds of indulgence and be sure that he will have 
' all the women and nine-tenths of the men on his 
side' (p. 33). 

Once more, theologians condemn the military as 
well as the industrial passions ; and here, too, they are 
merely covering over our brutal natural passions with 



- 1 .' X VZA 1 ySTEJLKIXG. 

a ffiasyial, sad aieefemg to condemn what every- 

':•;•;- £-;—? :.; 12 fi^f.::..:.:! :: 227 -":.:::; ::' 2:2:7.7 

DaeUng^ Smt example, is forbidden by law, and is vet 

ie of honour without which there 

. : j in a large society* Why should a 

to see some half-dozen men sacrificed 

-212 :i : 12222 21 -.1I221Z \ r--iz :.s 227 

•s, the pleasure of conversation, 

iz i :.:.t :i::::::ii ; :' :■■: 22:22- 22 :f::f.:'L : 1:1 

r t • > tS thousands of lives for an end which 

7 1 : : i r:od at all ? Keligion bids you 

.7.r-7 : 7 "72 2 7 :: >;•.. 2:2: :: '-.:? ~ . .; ; 7 — 2-7 11 

:'.: yourself: religion forbids and honour 

; religion orders you to turn the 

to quarrel for a trine ; religion is 

humility, honour on pride ; how to reconcile 

: wiser heads than mine ' (p. 132). 

Z 2 7 . is pointed by an elaborate portrait, 

recalls Richardson's ideal hero. He 

sir Charles Grandison hj anticipation 

E: rets before us a fine gentleman of 

the ftigjbe^t type, lavish in his expenditure, but 

always grinded fey the most exquisite taste ; cheerful 

12 1 : :1..2 .21 12S 1222 7222 22 22: 1212:212 2 22 i 

- - - - 22 : 2i izest of his guests ; solid as well 
his conversation, and never using an 
i profane word; careful in his religious 
to- the poor, a father to his 
but strictly just master to his 





:i . :.: - 



? --' 

'm _ t :: :_: -r. :.lt :':;■:■: ::' iz. : : lL --i"!_- :~ 

__ r .^ _-. , _.,.._... ". _ _. - : . ._ ■ 



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258 FREETHINKING AND PLA1NSPEAKING. 

they pay allegiance to another than their lawful 
sovereign. Hide it from ourselves as we may, the 
master whom we really obey is not Grod, but public 
opinion. This theory of Mandeville's perhaps sug- 
gested some of Pope's keenest satire. It is a syste- 
matic statement of the poet's pet doctrine of the Ruling 
Passion. 

Search, then, the ruling passion ; there alone 
The wild are constant, and the cunning known ; 
The fool consistent, and the false sincere ; 
Priests, princes, women no dissemblers here : 
This clue once found unravels all the rest, 
The prospect clears, and Wharton stands confest. 

The same theory, according to Mandeville, will 
include not only Wharton and Marlborough and 
Chartres and Bolingbroke, but Berkeley and Addison 
(the i parson in a tie-wig,' as Mandeville called him), 
and all the saints and moralists, as well as the sinners 
and blasphemers of the age. The love of honour is 
our one principle, and love of honour is merely a 
decent periphrasis for a desire to gratify our vanity. 
The gentleman values himself on his fidelity to his 
word. f The rake and scoundrel brag of their vices 
and boast of their impudence.' In both the funda- 
mental principle is the same. 

The argument is, in one sense, a mere juggle. The 
artifice is transparent. Pride is a dyslogistic epithet 
given to a natural passion which may be good or bad. 
Call it self-respect, and the paradox vanishes. To 
desire the sympathy and praise of our fellow T -creatures 



MANDEVILLE' S 'FABLE OF THE BEES: 259 

is not a bad motive, though it may accidentally come 
into collision with virtuous desires. To say that the 
vilest have natural affections is not to prove that the 
natural affections are a sham, but that there is virtue 
even in the most abandoned. Beneath the paradoxical 
outside, however, there lies a rough protest against 
the old theological dogmas. Human nature rises 
against the theory which pronounces it to be hopelessly 
corrupt, and which, by a logical consequence, proceeds 
to estimate all virtue by the degree in which natural 
instincts are suppressed. Mandeville may be inter- 
preted as refusing to accept the monastic ideal of 
virtue ; though his refusal certainly takes an awkward 
form. Your theologians, he says, have endeavoured 
to cramp men's intellects and to eradicate their pas- 
sions. Possibly you may have fitted them for another 
world, but you have certainly incapacitated them for 
this. You exiled the masculine virtues from the 
sickly and attenuated forms of Catholic saints and 
hermits ; but secular life cannot be carried on without 
them. The code of honour expresses an attempt of 
the native vigour of the race to break the fetters with 
which priests would shackle it.' Our spiritual phy- 
sicians, as Mandeville understood them, proposed to 
bleed us, like so many Sangrados, till we were fitted 
for a diet of herbs and water ; and to justify the 
operation, they assured us that our blood was vitiated 
and corrupt. Mandeville says that if we would enjoy 
robust health we cannot afford to lose a drop of blood ; 

s 2 



260 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

but instead of inferring that the blood is not corrupt, 
he infers that corruption is good. Brand all enjoy- 
ment as vice, and the natural eiFect of establishing an 
indelible association will be an avowed justification of 
vicious enjoyment. Mandevilles are the inevitable 
antithesis to an overstrained asceticism ; and we may 
so far sympathise to some extent with his refusal to be 
mutilated to suit the fancies of priests. 

Mandeville, however, goes farther. Wilfully, or 
deceived by his own sophistry, he declares that this 
code of honour, and, indeed, that morality generally, is 
a mere sham. He opens the commentary on his verses 
by a singular history of the process by which virtue 
first made its appearance in the world. Certain 
mysterious ( lawgivers ' — persons who appear in all the 
theological speculations of the time — resolved for their 
own base purposes to invent virtue. These people 
( thoroughly examined all the strength and frailties 
of our nature, and observing that none were either so 
savage as not to be charmed with praise or so despic- 
able as patiently to bear contempt, justly concluded 
that flattery must be the most powerful argument that 
could be used to exalt human creatures ' (p. 14). They 
extolled our superiority over the other animals, and 
assured us that we were capable of the most noble 
achievements; and ' having by this artful way of flattery 
insinuated themselves into the hearts of men, they began 
to instruct them in the notions of honour and shame.' 
Thus mankind became divided into two classes: the 



MANDEVILLE'S 'FABLE OF THE BEES? 261 

'wild grovelling wretches' (p. 16) who pursued nothing 
but the gratification of their own appetites, and the 
nobler creatures who reduced their appetites under the 
bondage of their reason, and thus obtained the mastery 
over their fellows. Thus by ( the skilful management 
of wary politicians ' mankind was induced to stigmatise 
those actions which were harmful to the public as 
vicious, and to call those which were beneficial 
virtuous. Even the vilest were interested in main- 
taining this theory, inasmuch as they received a share 
of the benefits produced by virtue ; and, at least, found 
their account in repressing the competition of other 
vile persons by advocating the new maxims. The 
doctrine is summed up in the aphorism that ( the 
moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery 
begot upon pride ' (p. 18). This preposterous carica- 
ture of modern utilitarianism is precisely analogous to 
the ordinary Deist doctrine that the sacred writings 
were simple forgeries. Virtue, like religion, was 
regarded as a mere figment when it was no longer 
believed to come straight from heaven. The only 
alternative admitted to the supernatural origin of all 
the beliefs the possession of which distinguishes us from 
beasts was their deliberate invention. Virtue therefore 
naturally presents itself as a mere fashion, changing 
like taste in dress or in architecture. Mandeville's 
argument, directed primarily against Shaftesbury, is 
simply an extension of that upon which Locke had 
conferred celebrity in the course of his attack upon 



262 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAXING. 

innate ideas. Shaftesbury had tried to prove that the 
standard of taste was invariable, and upon that doc- 
trine had founded his theory of morality. Mandeville 
plausibly enough argues that it is fluctuating and 
uncertain in the highest degree. Sometimes the florist 
admires the tulip, at other times the carnation. Beards 
are worn in one country and shaved in another. Broad- 
brimmed hats succeed narrow brims, and big buttons 
alternate with little ones. ' What mortal,' he asks, i can 
decide which is handsomest abstract from the mode in 
being?' (p. 208). Our taste is the ultimate arbiter, and 
our taste varies indefinitely and capriciously. Now 
' in morals there is no greater certainty' (p. 209). The 
laws of marriage vary so widely that what is regarded 
as an abomination in one country is considered as 
perfectly becoming in another. A Mahommedan may 
regard wine-drinking with an aversion as great as that 
which we reserve for the practices which we most 
abhor ; and in both cases the horror will be supposed 
to arise from nature. Which is the true religion ? is 
the question which has caused more harm than all the 
other questions put together. At Pekin, at Constan- 
tinople, and at Rome, you will receive three replies, 
utterly different, but equally peremptory. Is not the 
search after a single standard a mere wild-goose chase ? 
The argument is hardly calculated to puzzle anyone 
at the present day. The believer in intuitive morality 
replies by pointing to certain primary beliefs which 
underlie the superficial variations ; and the utilitarian 



MAXDEVILLE'S 'FABLE OF THE BEES: 263 

replies, as Berkeley replied in substance and Hume 
with greater detail and completeness, by giving an 
external test of morality. Since different races have 
supposed different actions to be beneficial, the standard 
of morals has varied very widely; and since the 
beneficial tendency of certain actions is palpable, the 
variation has been confined within certain limits. By 
this reply, Mandeville, as he had explicitly stated the 
utilitarian criterion, should have been convinced. His 
purpose, however, being simply to startle the preju- 
dices of his readers, he was content to dwell upon the 
difficulty without suggesting the answer. He was the 
more open to an easy apparent refutation ; and of the 
answers which he provoked, the most remarkable was 
the singularly clear and vigorous assault of William 
Law. 1 Law, now chiefly remembered for his later 
divergence into mysticism, was amongst the very ablest 
controversialists of his age. Few of his contempo- 
raries show the same vigour of reasoning, and it would 
be hard to mention one who can stand beside him for 
fervid eloquence. This book was re-published in 1844 
with a preface by Mr. Maurice, and it is an amusing 
literary phenomenon to see Law's clear and manly 
English interpreted into the peculiar dialect of his 
expounder. A fog is drawn before the sun to help us 
to read. Law makes short work of Mandeville's 
superficial sophistries : he strikes them down at a 

1 See Law's works, vol. ii. Edin. 1762. 



264 FREETHINK1NG AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

single blow. An action, he says, is virtuous '■ because 
it is in obedience to reason and the laws of God ; it 
does not cease to be so because a body is formed by 
use or created by disposition easy and ready for the 
performance of it ' (p. 41). On Mandeville's strange 
hypothesis that pity was not virtuous because spon- 
taneous, f all habits of virtue would be blameable ' 
(p. 41), because all such habits make good actions 
more spontaneous. He, in short, who practises virtue 
with the least self-denial is the most virtuous man, for 
self-denial is not the essence, but an accident of virtue. 
Mandeville's attempt to prove virtue to be arbitrary 
is met as victoriously as his attempt to prove that it is 
not meritorious. The theory is self-contradictory. 
Science, says Law, is only an improvement of those 
first principles which nature has given us. The mathe- 
matician must start from axioms obvious to all 
mankind. Take them away and the science vanishes. 
' Do but suppose oil to be invented, and then it will 
follow that nothing could be invented in any science' 
(p. 23). Morality would not be arbitrary, but incon- 
ceivable, if we had not some primary perceptions of 
right and wrong. The beautiful theory of a fiction 
started by hypothetical legislators is ingeniously 
parodied by a similar theory as to the origin of an 
erect posture. Some clever philosopher discovered 
that though man crept on the ground, he was made up 
of pride, and flattery might set him on his legs. They 
told him what a grovelling thing it was to creep on 



MANDEV1LLWS 'FABLE OF THE BEES: 265 

his legs like the meanest animals; and thus they 
i wheedled him into the honour and dignity of walking 
upright to serve their own ambitious ends, and that 
they might have his hands to be employed in their 
drudgery ' (p. 20). Virtue is no mere cheat ; it is 
( founded in the immutable relations of things, in the 
perfections and attributes of God, and not in the pride 
of man or the craft of cunning politicians ' (p. 29). 

This, and much more, is excellent logic — too good, 
one might think, to be thrown away upon such poor 
game as the big-button theory of morality. And yet 
at this point there intrudes a certain doubt as to 
whether Law has really struck the vital point of Man- 
deville's theory. It is, doubtless, utterly absurd to 
suppose that men were cheated into virtue — as absurd 
as to suppose that they were cheated into an upright 
posture. The doctrine was only possible, even as an 
amusing paradox, in days when men could argue 
seriously that all the prophets and apostles were vulgar 
impostors. It might be summarily swept aside on to 
the rubbish heap, where extinct fallacies decay till 
they are picked up for the amusement of some student 
of human eccentricity. But Law's reply seems to 
assume that we are driven to a choice between two 
alternatives, neither of which is accepted by modern 
thinkers. Strauss does not hold that the early Chris- 
tians were cheats, any more than he holds them to 
have been supernaturally inspired. The doctrines 
which they preached were the natural fruit of the 



266 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

human intellect working under certain conditions at a 
given stage of its development. The same change 
has passed over speculators upon morality. If not 
invented, it yet need not have been revealed. Man 
was not cheated into standing upright, nor was he made 
standing upright ; the upright posture appeared at a 
certain period in the course of his development from 
monkeyhood. Prove, as Mandeville tried to prove, 
that morality was originally due to the working of 
certain simple passions, and it certainly will not follow 
that morality is a matter of mere arbitrary fashion, 
varying indefinitely in different times and countries, 
like the taste for big buttons. We shall rather be 
induced to accept another branch of the dilemma. If 
we go to the root of the matter, we should rather say 
that a taste for big buttons was itself the product 
of certain uniform laws, acting as inflexibly as those 
which determine the details of our moral code. If 
morality is the creature of fashion, yet fashion is not 
the creature of chance, for chance has no existence. 
Springing from deeper and more uniform motives than 
those which regulate our taste in buttons, it is far less 
variable, but it is equally to be deduced from the 
workings of human nature and not from those vague 
entities, the l immutable relations of things,' nor yet 
from our intuitions of the inconceivable essence of the 
Divine Nature. The ' Fable of the Bees,' in fact, 
contains, in its crudest and most offensive form, the 
germ of what would now be called the derivative 



MANDEVILLE' S 'FABLE OF THE BEES: 267 

theory of morality, and falls into gratuitous perplexity 
by implicitly assuming chance as an objective reality, 
whilst in consistency Mandeville was bound to believe, 
and, indeed, actually professes his belief, in the uni- 
versality of natural laws. 

It is here, in fact, that we reach the logical foun- 
dation upon which Mandeville erected so strange a 
superstructure. The will of God (says Law) makes 
moral virtue our law. If we ask how this will appears, 
it is because we know that God is of infinite justice, 
and goodness, and truth. Every theologian must 
admit that this is the ultimate foundation of virtue ; 
but the ever-recurring difficulty cannot be evaded. 
Are God's justice and goodness the same with ours ? 
Must we not derive our knowledge of the Deity from 
our moral ideas instead of inverting the process ? If 
so, must we not discover some external basis for 
morality, and, in that case, where is it to be placed ? 
Law's answer at this time, when driven to his ultimate 
standing-ground, would apparently have consisted in 
an appeal to the external evidences of Christianity. 1 
Such thinkers, however, as Shaftesbury and Man- 
deville, who, agreeing in little else, agreed in rejecting 
or ignoring the force of those evidences, were neces- 
sarily driven to a different answer. Law, in his 
anxiety to depreciate natural religion, declares that 
the light of nature amounts only to a ' bare capacity 

1 See his answer to Tindal's ' Christianity as old as the Creation/ 



268 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

of receiving good or bad impressions, right or wrong 
opinions or sentiments, according to the state of the 
world we fall into.' (Answer to Tyndal, p. 113). 
Mandeville, sharing Law's contempt for human nature, 
would scarcely dispute this opinion ; but he denied 
what Law strenuously asserted, that the light of 
revelation supplied the defects of nature. He calmly 
extinguishes both lights and leaves us to grope our 
way in the dark. Shaftesbury, as we have seen, 
maintains that the light of nature is abundantly 
sufficient by itself. The harmonies written every- 
where on the face of the universe enable every reverent 
observer to discover the Creator. We i look through 
nature up to nature's God.' It is here that he comes 
into the most vital contrast with Mandeville. How, 
in fact, can a theology which makes God a synonym 
with nature supply a basis for morality? As Pope 
said in the e licentious stanza ' afterwards omitted from 
the ' Universal Prayer ' — 

Can that offend great nature's God, 
Which nature's self inspires ? 

Nature is an impartial and universal power : nature 
inspires hatred as well as love ; and arms the murderer 
as well as the judge. The difficulty is that which, 
in one form or another, perplexes every attempt to 
substitute pure Deism for revealed religion. Nature 
is too vague a deity to supply intelligible motives for 
action, or to attract our love and reverence. 

Butler's argument, both in the ' Analogy ' and in 



MANDEVILLE 1 S 'FABLE OF THE BEES: 269 

the ( Sermons/ is intended to meet this difficulty. 
His purpose is to show that nature, when rightly in- 
terpreted, bears witness to the existence of a power 
external to itself. We can read the great riddle, 
obscurely indeed, but yet so as to answer Pope's 
question satisfactorily. Some things, he maintains, 
which nature's self inspires, may be shown to offend 
great nature's God most unequivocally. Mandeville, 
on the other hand, pronounces the riddle to be hope- 
lessly insoluble. Nature is and ever must remain an 
unknown god ; { every part of her works, ourselves 
not excepted, is an impenetrable secret to us that 
eludes all enquiry ' (p. 422). The sufferings inflicted 
by nature are, with Butler, indications of Divine dis- 
pleasure ; with Mandeville, parts of a system, whose 
existence proves, indeed, that they have some purpose, 
but leaves that purpose utterly unintelligible. Nature 
makes animals feed upon each other. Waste of life, 
cruelty, lust, and voracity are the engines by which 
she works out her inscrutable purposes. Do you 
presume to blame them ? ( All actions in nature, 
abstractly considered, are equally indifferent; and 
whatever it may be to individual creatures, to die is 
not a greater evil to this earth, or the whole universe, 
than it is to be born ' (p. 441). Every attempt at a 
solution brings us back to the everlasting problem of 
the origin of evil. We see millions of living beings 
starved every year ; we see the most exquisite organ- 
isms put together only to be profusely wasted. 



270 FREETHINKWG AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

Nothing is too good to be eaten by the vilest of its 
fellow- creatures. A common fly, he argues rather 
quaintly, is a marvellous piece of workmanship, and 
yet flies are eaten in myriads by birds and spiders, 
which are of no use to us. The wondrous harmonies 
which excite Shaftesbury's easy rhetoric explain 
nothing. Look at nature impartially, and you must 
confess that admiration is balanced by horror. In 
seeking to enlarge our conceptions of Deity, He 
becomes too vague to excite any human emotion. 
You will not have a God who takes part with a 
section of the human race ; and you find it impossible 
to retain a God who takes part with virtue against 
vice, or with happiness against misery. When once 
the old anthropomorphic fancies are abandoned, 
nothing remains but a gulf of ignorance, across which 
no fine phrases can cast a trustworthy bridge. This, 
though it expresses the general tendency of Man- 
deville's argument, is not quite openly said ; for, 
either to blind his purpose, or from real inconsistency, 
or, more probably, from love of paradox, he introduces 
an argument or two in favour of Providence, and 
even, ostensibly, in favour of the Divine origin of 
the Pentateuch. 

Perhaps the most offensive, certainly the most 
original and instructive, part of Mandeville's reasoning 
is in its application to society. It is curious to find 
the very questions which now cause the bitterest dis- 
cussions cropping up, though of course in a cruder 



MANDEVILLE'S 'FABLE OF THE BEES: 271 

form, in the pages of Mandeville and Shaftesbury. 
The same battle is still raging, though the ground has 
a little shifted, and the combatants bring deadlier 
weapons and greater stores of ammunition into the 
field. 

Shaftesbury ridicules the Hobbists as modern meta- 
physicians sneer at Mr. Darwin. How did man come 
into the world ? Did he begin as a rudimentary embryo, 
from which presently sprouted here an eye, and there 
an ear, and then perhaps a tail, which luckily dropped 
off in time, leaving things, by good luck, just as they 
ought to be ? ( Surely,' he says, ( this is the lowest 
view of the original affairs of human kind.' (Moralists, 
Pt. II. § 4. ) But recognise Providence instead of chance 
as the author of the world, and we must admit that 
the social affections are as natural to man as eyes and 
ears. Hobbes's state of nature implies a chaos which 
had no elements of stability. Society, too, must be 
natural to man, and it follows that he never did nor 
could exist without it. Shaftesbury, like Mr. Disraeli, 
is plainly 6 on the side of the angels,' and would have 
taunted Mr. Huxley with his great-grandfather the 
ape, Mandeville replies in the spirit, and sometimes 
with the very arguments, of a modern believer in 
natural selection. Of nature, as a power apart from 
the phenomena which it governs, he knows nothing ; 
and is, therefore, by no means disposed to sing hymns 
to it after the Shaftesbury fashion. We can only 
trace its purposes by its performances. ' Knowing, 



272 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

a priori, belongs to God only. . . . Wretched man, 
on the contrary, is sure of nothing, his own existence 
not excepted, but from reasoning a posteriori ' (p. 393). 
Experience tells us that in the brute creation nature's 
great moving forces are pain, hunger, and suffering. 
Why should we look for anything different amongst 
mankind? The one great fact which we discover by 
observation is that which we have lately learnt to call 
the struggle for existence. Society, language, all 
that makes us differ from brutes, has been forced upon 
us by the conflict between our self-love and the con- 
ditions of our existence. The first thing that drove 
men to associate was probably the dread of wild beasts, 
as is testified by the legends of dragons and monsters 
which abound in all ancient history. The union was 
next rendered firmer by their dread of each other. 
Pride, the universal prime mover, made the strongest 
and bravest force their dominion upon the weak and 
cowardly. The third step was the invention of letters, 
which made permanent laws possible, or, in other 
words, enabled men to take permanent precautions 
against the outbreaks of individual passions. Then 
followed the division of labour, which is the natural 
product of a peaceful state of society, and the ground- 
work of all civilisation. Religion arose from the 
natural tendency of children and savages to attribute 
feelings like their own to external objects ; or, in 
Comtist phraseology, it began with fetishism. Legis- 
lators turned this fear of the invisible to account for 




MANDEVILLWS 'FABLE OF THE JBEES: 273 

strengthening the authority of the laws. Language 
is gradually developed out of the simple signs by 
which even brutes can make themselves mutually 
understood. Ages were doubtless required for its 
development, and to raise up politicians capable of 
putting the passions to their true use, and finally 
achieving the highest triumph of turning ( private 
vices into public benefits.' It is by slow degrees and 
by a series of successive failures that the machinery 
which is now fancied to be the direct work of nature 
was gradually brought to perfection. s We often 
ascribe/ he says, 6 to the excellency of man's genius, 
and the depth of his penetration, what is in reality 
owing to length of time, and the experience of many 
generations, ail of them very little differing from one 
another in natural parts and sagacity' (p. 361); a 
truth which he ingeniously illustrates by the case of a 
man-of-war, the mechanism of which is now explained 
by clever engineers, but which was in fact put together 
by a steady application of the rule of thumb. 

Arguments such as these have a strangely familiar 
sound, The dress rather than the substance is altered* 
Mandeville had not heard of Mr. Darwin's struggle 
for existence ; he had not studied Mr. Tylor's investi- 
gations of savage life ; he knew nothing of Malthus's 
laws of population or of Kicardo's analysis of the 
operations of modern competition. But the theory of 
the world which underlies his speculations, and the 
method for which it gives foundation, is pretty nearly 

T 



274 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

identical. The world is the scene of a huge struggle 

of units driven by conflicting passions, and their 

mutual pressure gives for its final result all those 

complex social and intellectual products which others 

attribute to providential interference. Would you 

unravel the plan of this mysterious and shifting scene, 

it is in vain to rely upon a priori reasonings, or to 

fancy that you can discover the purposes of the hidden 

Creator. By observing the results you can discover 

how the phenomena are generated, and what laws 

they obey; but why the laws should be these, and 

none other, is beyond the reach of our intelligence. 

The historical cause may be discovered ; the final 

cause is inscrutable. The modern man of science and 

the old reckless cynic agree in the resolution to look 

facts in the face, and to reject — sometimes rashly and 

brutally — anything that is not a hard, tangible fact. 

Hunger, lust, self-love are forces which cannot be 

overlooked ; but the finer creations of awe, reverence, 

and humanity may be dismissed as mere phantoms 

or resolved into coarser elements. If you wish to 

examine into the origin of things, it is extremely 

convenient to discard as non-existent everything that 

defies a simple analysis. And thus it was tempting 

to regard human beings as moving exclusively under 

the influence of brutal and selfish passions, which are 

palpable to the most cursory observer, and which, by 

a little dexterous manipulation, can be made to account 

for everything. There is certainly enough self-deceit, 



MANDEVILLE' S 'FABLE OF THE BEES: 275 

and hypocrisy, and cruelty, and selfishness in the world 
to be an awkward obstacle for optimists of the Shaftes- 
bury type. So many things are humbugs, that it is 
but a step to declare everything to be a humbug, 
except the one moving force which we so dexterously 
disguise from ourselves and from each other. Assume 
that selfishness is to human beings what gravitation is 
to the planetary bodies, and the task of the psycholo- 
gist is marvellously simplified. You say that the 
discovery is degrading ; well, Mandeville would reply, 
I want to discover the truth, not to flatter your pride ; 
and, on the same principle, you might call astronomy 
or physiology degrading. You are too proud to admit 
that the earth is not the centre of the universe, that 
you are made of flesh and bones, or that you have 
feelings in common with an ape ; but, if those are the 
facts, what is the use of struggling against their re- 
cognition ? Your dreams are pleasant ; but it does 
not answer in the long run to mistake a dream for a 

■ reality. 

The weak and the strong sides of the two theories 

i are curiously contrasted. Each writer, of course, can 

i resolutely ignore whatever is inconsistent with his 
hypotheses ; he must be a very dull or a very acute 
philosopher who does not find that process necessary. 

i Whilst Shaftesbury placidly shuts his eyes to the sin 
and suffering which offer insoluble problems to the 
consistent optimist, Mandeville seems almost to gloat 
over evils which may serve to perplex his adversaries. 

T 2 



276 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

Nature, so far from exciting rapturous enthusiasm, 
appears to him almost as a Moloch, delighting in the 
tortures of her creatures. Not that he is horror-struck 
or driven to despair. What is the use of being angry 
with the inevitable, or puzzling our heads over the 
inscrutable ? Let us take what we can get in this 
blind, fierce struggle, and make ourselves as comfort- 
able as we can under the circumstances. 

Virtue is an empty pretence ; for upon what can 
the service of this terrible deity repose except upon a 
clever calculation of our own interests ? To feather 
our own nests as warmly as may be is our only policy 
in this pitiless storm. Lust and pride are realities ; 
to gratify them is to secure the only genuine enjoy- 
ment. It is necessary, indeed, to use the conventional 
varnish of fine phrases, for flattery is a more potent 
instrument of success than open defiance of the world. 
But nothing is substantially satisfactory which is not 
perceptible to the senses. Mandeville, in short, is the 
legitimate precursor of those materialists of the last 
century who acknowledged the existence of nothing 
that could not be touched, tasted, and handled, and 
who were accustomed to analyse man into so much 
hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, and declare that 
nothing remained to be discovered. Ridicule his 
conclusions by all means, as much as you please : 
condemn still more unequivocally the cynical levity 
with which he abolishes virtue, and proclaims the 
world to be a hateful farce. No language could be 



MANDEVILLE'S 'FABLE OF THE BEES? 277 

too strong to convey our protest against such theories, 
were it not that they are too dead to need much pro- 
testing. But, after all is said that can or need be 
said, there is yet something on the other side. Man- 
deville's picture of the origin of society is far nearer 
the truth than Shaftesbury ? s, or than that of most 
contemporary philosophers. Partly, it is because his 
theories, which are a libel on civilised mankind, are 
not so far wrong when applied to man still half-brutal, 
and only showing the rudiments of religion or morality. 
But partly, too, the comparative accuracy of his 
results is due to the fact that his method is sound, 
though his spirit is detestable. An unflinching scep- 
ticism is a necessary, though a disagreeable, stage on 
the road to truth. Beautiful theories must be ques- 
tioned, however attractive ; and phantoms laid, what- 
ever consolation they may have conferred. Mande- 
ville, it is true, represents scepticism in its coarsest 

; and most unlovely stage. He has taken the old 
theological system, and retained all that was degrading 
whilst summarily destroying what was elevating. If 

I man be regarded as altogether vile, it is necessary to 
account for virtue by admitting the existence of some 
Divine element. But Mandeville will have nothing 
to do with the supernaturalism which has become 

j incredible to him, nor with Shaftesbury's attempt to 
make nature itself Divine, which he regards as mere 
flimsy bombast. And thus he leaves nothing but a 
bare, hideous chaos, entirely godless in the sense that 



278 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

it neither bears internal traces of Divine harmony, 
nor of the interference of Divine powers from without. 
Denying the reality of virtue, he sees no reason for 
providing any new form of belief round which the 
nobler impulses may gather. In short, he exhibits 
the result of taking the old theology and simply 
leaving out God. The result is naturally appalling. 
We have chaos without even a hint that some recon- 
structive process is necessary to supply the place of 
the old order. Without a God and without a hell 
and heaven, said theologians, there can be no virtue. 
Well, replies Mandeville in substance, we know 
nothing of God, and nothing of a future life ; and I ac- 
cept your conclusion that virtue is a humbug. True, 
it is a very convenient humbug ; but men of sense 
may laugh at it amongst themselves, though of course 
men of sense will not laugh in public. To say this, 
though not quite in plain words, and to say it with 
a grin, does not imply a very noble character. Yet 
we may admit a kind of gratitude to the man whose 
sweeping demolition of the ancient superstructure 
evidences the necessity of some deeper and sounder 
process of reconstruction, and who, if the truth must 
be spoken, has, after all, written a very amusing book. 



273 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

WARBURTOST. 1 

In the course of the once celebrated controversy 
between Warburton and Lowth, Lowth made one hit 
which must have told forcibly upon his opponent. 
He quoted the following passage from Clarendon's 
history : — c Colonel Harrison was the son of a butcher 
near Nantwich, in Cheshire, and had been bred up in 
the place of a clerk, under a lawyer of good account 
in those parts ; which kind of education introduces 
men into the language and practice of business, and, if 
it be not resisted by the great ingenuity of the person, 
inclines young men to more pride than any other kind 
of breeding, and disposes them to be pragmatical and 
insolent.' ( Now, my Lord,' says Lowth, ( as you 
have in your whole behaviour, and in all your writings, 
remarkably distinguished yourself by your humility, 
lenity, meekness, forbearance, candour, humanity, 
civility, decency, good manners, good temper, modera- 
tion with regard to the opinions of others, and a 
modest diffidence of your own, this unpromising cir- 

1 Warburton's Works : Loudon, 1811. 



280 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

cumstance of your early education ' (that, namely, of 
being educated in the same way as Harrison) ( is so 
far from being a disgrace to you, that it highly 
redounds to your praise.' Which piece of irony, 
being translated, expresses the most conspicuous fact 
in Warburton's character ; namely, that he was as 
6 proud, pragmatical, and insolent ' as might be ex- 
pected from a man who brought to theological con- 
troversies the habits of mind acquired in an attor- 
ney's office. Warburton, in fact, is the most perfect 
specimen of a type not unfrequent amongst clergymen. 
We may still, though less often than formerly, observe 
a man in the pulpit who obviously ought to be at the 
bar ; and though the legal habit of mind may be a 
very useful corrective to certain theological tendencies, 
the more common result of thus putting the square 
man in the round hole is to produce that kind of 
incongruity which in another profession gives rise to 
the opprobrious term of sea-lawyer. Warburton was, 
as we shall presently see, a lawyer to the backbone in 
more senses than one; but the most prominent and 
least amiable characteristic, which suggested Lowth's 
sarcasm, was his amazing litigiousness. 

For many years together he led the life of a terrier 
in a rat-pit, worrying all theological vermin. His 
life, as he himself observed in more dignified language, 
was ( a warfare upon earth ; that is to say, with bigots 
and libertines, against whom I have denounced eter- 
nal war, like Hannibal against Rome, at the altar.' 



WARBURTON. 281 

Among bigots and libertines we must reckon every- 
body, Christian or infidel, whose form of belief differed 
from Warburton's, and add that Warburton's form 
of belief was almost peculiar to himself. To entertain 
a different opinion, or to maintain the same opinion 
on different grounds, was an equal title to his hostility. 
He regrets in one place the necessity of assailing 
his friends. ( Why,' he asks, pathetically, e did I not 
rather choose the high road of literary honours, and 
pick out some poor critic or small philosopher of this 
(the Deist) school to offer up at the shrine of violated 
sense and virtue ? 5 ' Then,' he thinks, ' he might 
have flourished in the favour of his superiors, and the 
goodwill of all his brethren.' (IV. 79.) Alas! it 
could not be. His creed had that unique merit 
which he ascribes to the Jewish religion ; namely, that 
it ' condemned every other religion as an imposture.' 
(IV. 74.) To disagree with him was to be not 
merely a fool, but a rogue. So universal, indeed, was 
his intolerance of any difference of opinion, that bigot 
and libertine, wide as is the sweep of those damnatory 
epithets, can by no means include all the objects of 
his aversion. He makes frequent incursions into re- 
gions where abuse is not sanctified by theology. The 
argument of the ' Divine Legation ' wanders through 
all knowledge, sacred and profane, and every step brings 
him into collision with some fresh antagonist. Glanc- 
ing at the table of contents, we find a series of such 
summaries as these : — ( Sir Isaac Newton's chronology 



282 FREETHINKING AND PLAINS PEAKING. 

of the Egyptian empire confuted, and shown to 
contradict all sacred and profane antiquity, and even 
the nature of things ; ' ( Herman Witsius's arguments 
examined and confuted ; ' a prophecy ' vindicated 
against the absurd interpretation of the rabbins and 
Dr. Shuckford ; ' the Jews e vindicated from the 
calumnious falsehoods of the poet Voltaire ; ' ' an ob- 
jection of Mr. Collins examined and confuted;' 
6 Lord Bolingbroke's accusation examined and ex- 
posed ; ' l The Bishop of London's discourse examined 
and confuted ; ' and, in short, his course is marked, 
if we will take his word for it, like that of an ancient 
hero, by the corpses of his opponents. Deists, 
atheists, and pantheists, are, of course, his natural 
prey. Hobbes, ( the infamous Spinoza ' (V. 124), 
and Bayle, Shaftesbury, Collins, Toland, Tindal, 
Chubb, Morgan, and Mandeville, but above all his 
detested enemy Bolingbroke, are 6 examined and 
confuted ' till we are weary of the slaughter. But 
believers do not escape much better. If, as he 
elegantly expresses it, he ( dusts Hume's jacket ' for 
not believing in miracles, he belabours Wesley still 
more vigorously for believing that miracles are not 
extinct. From Conyers Middleton, the Essayist and 
Reviewer of that day, who, indeed, long escaped as a 
private friend, up to Lowth, Sherlock, and Jortin, he 
spared neither dignity nor orthodoxy. The rank and 
file of the controversial clergy, Sykes, and Stebbing, 
and Webster, fell before his ' desperate hook' like 



WARBURTON. 283 

corn before the sickle. And when the boundless field 
of theological controversy was insufficient for his 
energies, he would fall foul of the poet Akenside for 
differing from him as to the proper use of ridicule, 
or of Crousaz for misinterpreting the ' Essay on Man/ 
or of Bolingbroke for his assault upon the memory of 
Pope, or of a whole list of adversaries who gathered to 
defend Shakespeare from his audacious mangling. The 
innumerable hostilities which did not find expression 
in any of these multitudinous conflicts, struggled to 
light in the notes on the c Dunciad.' Probably no man 
who has lived in recent times has ever told so many of 
his fellow-creatures that he held them to be unmiti- 
gated fools and liars. He stalks through the literary 
history of the eighteenth century ostentatiously dis- 
playing the most outrageous paradoxes, and bringing 
down his controversial shillelagh on the head of any 
luckless mortal who ventures to hint a modest dissent. 
There is, to me at least, a certain charm about this 
overflowing and illimitable pugnacity. We have 
learnt to be so civil to each other, that one sometimes 
fancies (and I suspect with some reason) that the 
creeds which excite so languid a defence are not very 
firmly held. At any rate, it is refreshing, in this 
milder epoch, to meet with a gentleman who proposes 
to cudgel his opponents into Christianity, and thrusts 
the Gospel down their throats at the end of the 
bludgeon. 

Even Warburton, many-sided and complicated as 



284 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

were his hostilities, was not above the necessity of 
finding allies. JSTo man, though gifted with the most 
perverse ingenuity, can stand quite alone ; and 
Warburton formed two remarkable connections. As 
is usual with boisterous persons, both these friends 
were men of a temperament very different from his 
own ; as, indeed, two Warburtons would have formed 
a combination more explosive and unstable than any 
hitherto known to chemists. Both Pope and Hurd 
were suited to him by way of contrast. War- 
burton was well fitted to be Pope's bully, and Hurd 
to serve as the more decorous assistant of Warburton's 
vengeance. Pope seems to have been really touched 
by Warburton's blustering championship. It is a 
very pleasant thing to discover that you have been 
talking deep religious philosophy, when, in the inno- 
cence of your heart, you fancy that you have been 
versifying second-hand infidelity. The thin-skinned 
poet welcomed with almost infantile joy the aid of his 
pachydermatous defender, and naturally supposed that 
the man who had discovered him to be an ortho- 
dox philosopher, must be himself a profound divine. 
Warburton took a natural pride in having cut out so rich 
a prize from under the guns of the infidel Bolingbroke, 
and raised himself in general esteem by acquiring a 
right of spiritual proprietorship in the foremost writer 
of the time. The friendship with Hurd is more 
curious and characteristic. Hurd is a man for whom, 
though he has attracted a recent biographer, animated 



WARBURTON. 28 

by the ordinary biographical spirit, it is difficult to 
find a good word. He was a typical specimen of the 
offensive variety of university don; narrow-mind ed, 
formal, peevish, cold-blooded, and intolerably con- 
ceited. In short, as Johnson said of Harris, i he was 
a prig, and a bad prig.' Even Warburton, we are 
told, could never talk to him freely. In his country 
vicarage he saw nobody, snubbed his curate, and never 
gave an entertainment except on one occasion, w~hen 
Warburton, who was staying with him, was forced to 
rebel against the intolerable solitude. When a bishop, he 
never drove a quarter of a mile without his episcopal 
coach and his servants in full liveries. He rose to that 
eminent position chiefly on the reputation of writing in 
Addisonian style and being a good critic of Horace. 
The virtue which he particularly affected was filial 
affection, and, after three years' acquaintance, his 
Christian humility led him to confide to Warburton, 
who was the son of an attorney, that his own father 
had been a farmer. He was sufficiently amiable to 
mention his mother in endearing terms ; and in a letter 
to Warburton, after touching upon certain presentation 
copies of his own book, and on Sir John Dalrymple's 
newly-published memoirs, he observes quite patheti- 
cally that the good old woman 'fell asleep almost 
literally ' about a fortnight before. Warburton, 
though not a very noble creature, had at least a little 
more human nature about him. The relations between 
the pair of theologians naturally recall in some degree 



286 FREETHINKING AND PL AINSPJE AXING. 

those between Johnson and Boswell. Warburton, 
however, is but a feeble-jointed and knock-kneed 
giant compared with the lexicographer, and Hurd a 
very dry representative of Boswell. The flattery, 
too, was in this case reciprocal ; and perhaps the great 
man pours out more mouthfilling compliments than his 
satellite. If Hurd thinks that Warburton's memory 
will be endeared to the wise and good for ever, 
Warburton regards Hurd as one of the first men of 
the day, and holds him to be Addison's equal in 
elegance, while far his superior in all solid merits. The 
two together looked out with condescension upon War- 
burton's humbler followers, and with infinite contempt 
on all the world beside. The general principle of 
their common creed is neatly expressed by Hurd, who 
says that f one hardly meets with anything else ' in this 
world but coxcombs ; to which Warburton adds an 
admiring comment that no coxcomb has a grain of 
gratitude or generosity. The particular application 
of this maxim shows that Walpole is an insuffer- 
able coxcomb ; Hume a cold, conceited, treacherous 
rogue ; Johnson full of malignity, folly, and inso- 
lence ; Garrick a writer below Cibber, whose 'sense, 
whenever he deviates into it, is more like nonsense ; ' 
Young ' the finest writer of nonsense of any of this 
age ; ' Smollett a ( vagabond Scot ; ' Priestley ( a 
wretched fellow ; ' and Voltaire l a scoundrel.' Hurd 
carefully preserved the letters containing these beau- 
tiful specimens of Billingsgate, and left them for 



WARBURTON. 287 

publication after his death. The mode in which these 
congenial spirits co-operated during their lives is 
sufficiently illustrated by their quarrel with Jortin. 
Jortin, who had been on excellent terms with War- 
burton, mildly observed, in a ' Dissertation on the 
State of the Dead ' as described by Homer and Virgil, 
that Warburton's ( elegant conjecture ' as to the mean- 
ing of the sixth book of the'^Eneid ' (a conjecture chiefly 
remarkable as affording the occasion of one of Gibbon's 
first literary efforts) was not satisfactorily established. 
Hereupon Hurd published a pamphlet, bitterly assail- 
ing Jortin for his audacity. Hurd's elaborate irony, 
as translated by a contemporary writer, amounted to 
presenting the following rules by which the conduct 
of all men should be regulated when in presence of 
the great master : — 

6 You must not write on the same subject that he 
does. You must not write against him. You must not 
glance at his arguments even without naming him. 
You must not oppose his principles though you let 
his arguments alone. You must not pretend to help 
forward any of his arguments that may seem to fall 
lame. When you design him a compliment you must 
not refuse it in full form, without impertinently quali- 
fying your civilities by assigning a reason why you 
think he deserves them. You must never call any of 
his arguments by the name of conjectures, for you 
ought to know that this capital genius never proposed 
anything to the judgment of the public with diffidence 
in all his life.' 



288 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

The infringement of such rules as these was, in 
fact, all that Hurd could lay to Jortin's charge. 
Warburton welcomed this assistance of his jackal 
with a perfect shout of delight. He knew but of one 
man from whose heart or whose pen so fine a piece of 
irony could come. Next to his pleasure in seeing 
himself i so finely praised ' was the pleasure he took 
f in seeing Jortin mortified.' And in another letter 
he remarks that 6 they must be dirty fellows indeed 
who can think I have no reason to complain of Jortin's 
mean, low, and ungrateful conduct towards me ; ' the 
whole crime of whom, be it observed, consisted in 
Jortin's differing from him as to the value of a critical 
conjecture. Jortin some time afterwards revenged 
himself on Hurd's master by pointing out certain 
blunders of which he had been guilty in a classical 
translation. Warburton, unable to deny the error, 
made a kind of surly overture to Jortin, which was 
coldly accepted ; but no real reconciliation took place. 
The two conspirators abused Jortin in private, but 
did not again attack him for the abominable audacity 
of holding an opinion of his own. 

The almost incredible arrogance, of which this is 
a pleasing specimen, breathes through most of War- 
burton's writings. Mr. Pattison says, rather broadly, 
that 6 Warburton's stock argument is a threat to 
cudgel any one who disputes his opinion.' Though 
he does not often appeal thus explicitly to the argu- 
mentum baculinum, the cudgel is, in fact, never far 



WARBURTON. 289 

from his hand. His style is too cumbrous and diffuse 
to produce many of the terse epithets which Swift 
discharged at his enemies ; but as we plod through his 
pages we come across some flowers of the eloquence 
supposed to be characteristic of Billingsgate, of which 
a specimen or two may be formed into a malodorous 
bouquet. I gather a few at random from different 
parts of his writings. In the course of his assault 
upon mystics, he informs us that the Moravian hymn- 
book is 6 a heap of blasphemous and beastly nonsense.' 
(VIII. 343.) Of William Law, a man, as he admits, 
of great abilities, he says, the ( poor man is here fallen 
into a trap which his folly laid for his malice.' (VIII. 
272.) Coming to less offensive writers, we may quote 
his character of Dr. Richard Grey, whom he had once 
called the e truly learned and worthy writer on the 
Book of Job.' Grey offended him, and he spoke of 
his commentaries on Hudibras as the i most execrable 
heap of nonsense ' that almost ever appeared in any 
learned language. In one of his controversial writings 
he falls foul of him again. ( Though I had the cadu- 
ceus of peace in my hands,' he observes, ( yet it was 
only in cases of necessity I made use of it. And, 
therefore, I chose to let pass, without any chastise- 
ment, such impotent railers as Richard Grey and one 
Bate, zany to a mountebank.' (XII. 508.) Bate was 
'a respectable Hebrew scholar, but as a follower of 
the whimsical theories of Hutchinson, not quite un- 
deserving of the taunt. We will turn to what War- 

u 



290 FREETHINK1NG AND PL AINSPE AXING. 

burton calls ( the pestilent herd of libertine scribblers, 
with which the island is overrun, whom I would hunt 
down as good King Edgar did his wolves, from the 
mighty author of" Christianity as Old as the Creation," 
to the drunken blaspheming cobbler, who wrote 
against " Jesus and the Resurrection " ' (XII. 59) ; 
and those opponents of the existing order whom he 
describes as ' the agents of public mischief, which not 
only accelerate our ruin, but accumulate our disgraces, 
wretches the most contemptible for their parts, the 
most infernal for their manners.' (IY. 12.) Two 
great names will be enough. Of Hume he says in a 
tract, which is perhaps the weakest he ever wrote, 
as it took him furthest out of his depth, that he merely 
runs i his usual philosophic course from knavery to 
nonsense ' (XII. 352), and adds that Hume's f great 
philosophic assertion of one of the prime master-wheels 
of superstition, labours with immovable nonsense.' 
Of a statement of Voltaire about the Jews, he 
remarks, c I believe it will not be easy to find, even in 
the dirtiest sink of freethinking, so much falsehood, 
absurdity, and malice heaped together in so few words.' 
(V. 9.) It is almost pathetic to find Warburton 
throwing dirt at such men, in the placid conviction of 
his immeasurable superiority. A couple of instances 
of delicate irony shall close the selection. 'Even 
this choice piece of the first philosophy, his lordship's ' 
(Bolingbroke's) ( sacred pages, is ready,' he says, f to 
be put to very different uses, according to the tempers 



WARBURTON. 291 

in which they have found his few admirers on the one 
side, and the public on the other ; like the China 
utensil in the " Dunciad," which one has used for a 

pot, and another carried home for his headpiece.' 

(II. 260.) l And here is his retort to the unlucky 
Dr. Stebbing, who conceived himself to have shown 
that the sacrifice of Isaac would be equally prophetic 
of Christ's death whether Warburton's interpretation 
be admitted or not. ( He hath shown it, indeed,' 
snorts his antagonist, ( as the Irishman showed his 

1 This passage, as I have quoted it, occurs in one of the Appendices 
to the ' Divine Legation.' It is reprinted with improvements from the 
letters on Bolirigbroke (XII. 185), and the curious in matters of style 
may be amused by comparing the two forms of this brilliant passage. 
Another literary curiosity of a different kind may be worth a moment's 
notice. Warburton published, in 1727, a little book called ' An Enquiry 
into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles,' which was afterwards sup- 
pressed. The last paragraph is an odd plagiarism from the famous 
passage in Milton : ' Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant 
nation, rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her in- 
vincible locks : methinks I see her as an eagle, mewing her mighty youth, 
and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam, purging 
and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly 
radiance, while the whole noise of timorous and. flocking birds, with 
those that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, 
and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and. 
schisms.' Warburton's version is as follows : ' Methinks I see her, like 
the mighty eagle, renewing her immortal youth, and purging her 
opening sight at the unobstructed beams of our meridian sun, which 
some pretend to say that had been dazzled and abused by an inglorious 
pestilential meteor ; while the ill-affected birds of night would with 
their envious hootirjgs prognosticate a length of darkness and decay.' 
It is characteristic that in Warburton's version the eagle represents 
' the university,' instead of the ' noble and puissant nation ' ; and the 
' fountain itself of heavenly radiance,' is represented by the favour of 
His Gracious Majesty George I. 

u 2 



292 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 
.' (XL 404.) The decorum of this passage in 



a grave theological .discussion is perhaps unrivalled. 

Nothing could exceed Warburton's confidence in 
the result of the warfare carried on by such weapons. 
Every now and then he announces that he pledges 
himself that some argument shall never again be 
regarded in e the learned world ' as anything but an 
ignorant prejudice ; whilst a similar boast from one of 
his antagonists is declared to be worthy only of some 
'wild conventicle of Methodists or Hutchinsonians. 
(IV. 347.) Warburton, indeed, trusts so implicitly 
in the efficacy of his arguments, that he ventures to 
take the dangerous line of insisting on the strength of 
the case against him. Nobody had thoroughly con- 
futed Collins, until Warburton searched the matter to 
the bottom. Nay, it might be doubted whether the 
weight of the argument was not, on the whole, against 
Christianity, until he turned the scale. For want of 
the master-key by which he unlocked all difficulties, 
c the Mosaic dispensation had lain for ages involved 
in obscurities, and the Christian had become subject 
to insuperable difficulties.' (VI. 256.) It is time to 
consider what was this marvellous expedient which 
had been concealed from the eyes of all theologians till 
the middle of the eighteenth century, and was now for 
the first time to base the evidences of revealed religion 
on an immovable foundation. The general principles 
on which he reasoned, and the special arguments which 



WARBURTON. 293 

justified these amazing pretensions, well deserve a 
little examination. 

By way of preface to a more detailed statement, I 
may venture a word or two upon Warburton's special 
intellectual characteristic — his ardent passion for a 
paradox. He admits it himself with a quaint com- 
placency. After stating that f if the Scriptures have,' 
as Middleton had said, every fault which can possibly 
deform a language, this is so far from proving such 
language was not divinely inspired, that it is one 
certain mark of its original ' (VIII. 281) ; he winds up 
his demonstration by asserting that the Koran became 
to true believers ( as real and substantial a pattern of 
eloquence as any whatsoever; ' and adds that this 
is a paradox ' which like many others that I have had 
the odd fortune to advance, will presently be seen 
to be only another name for truth' (VIII. 289.) He 
is never so proud as when he has hit upon some propo- 
sition so ingeniously offensive to all parties, that, as he 
puts it, ' believers and unbelievers have concurred, by 
some blind chance or other ' (VII. 315), in pronouncing 
his arguments absurd. The Warburtonian paradox is 
one of a peculiar class. He is not paradoxical, like some 
eminent thinkers — Hobbes, for example, or Berkeley 
— from a certain excess of acuteness. To such men, 
intellectual progress owes much, because their error 
consists chiefly in attaching too much importance to 
some half-truth, and serves at any rate, to impress it 
upon us by force of exaggeration. Warburton's most 



294 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

audacious speculations seldom strike new light out of 
his subject; and, to say the truth, few men of equal 
vigour have ever shown less real acuteness. He was 
paradoxical as a deaf man writing upon music, or a 
blind man writing upon painting might be paradoxical. 
He blunders into the strangest criticisms upon Shakes- 
peare from sheer want of even a rudimentary poetical 
faculty ; and in the same way, he plays the queerest 
tricks with the Bible, from his deficiency in spiritual 
insight. Or we may say — and the analogy is perhaps 
closer — that his paradoxes are like those of a petti- 
fogging lawyer, who strains the language of statutes 
into the most unexpected conclusions, in complete 
disregard of their spirit. He reads the Bible precisely 
like an Act of Parliament ; and to him one argu- 
ment is pretty much as good as another, so long as 
it can be deduced from any clause of the inspired 
text in due syllogistic form. It matters nothing that 
the whole meaning should have evaporated in the 
strange contortions to which the words of his docu- 
ments have been subjected. He is fond of quoting 
Hobbes's inimitable maxim, that words are the 
counters of wise men and the money of fools. It 
exactly expresses his own practice. Give him a text 
which can be fitted into his argument, and he uses it 
with the most audacious confidence, caring nothing 
for the context or for the sense in which it must have 
been used by the original author. Although an argu- 
ment constructed on such principles is devoid of any 



WARBURTON. 295 

intrinsic value — and, indeed, it may be doubted whether 
Warburton ever made a single genuine convert — there 
is yet one interest in the result. He brings into the 
most startling relief the current opinions of his day. 
A man of genius, even when using very dangerous 
arguments, is guided by a certain unconscious instinct 
from pressing them into the most offensive conclusions. 
Warburton, from his utter want of tact, blurts out the 
absurdities which a more acute writer judiciously 
throws into the background. Without attributing 
the slightest conscious dishonesty to many eminent 
reasoners, we may say that they know how to glide 
safely over the weaker parts of their system. An 
obtuse thinker of the Warburton order splashes in- 
discriminately through thick and thin, and uninten- 
tionally reveals to us the errors which perhaps exist, 
though in a latent form, in the theories of more 
judicious writers. From this point of view, he may 
be studied as illustrating the uglier tendencies of 
eighteenth-century theology. It may be added that 
we find in uncouth forms and in their native absurdity 
some arguments which still pass muster by the help of 
a little philosophical varnish. The ( Divine Legation 
of Moses Demonstrated,' is an attempt to support one 
gigantic paradox by a whole system of affiliated para- 
doxes. Warburton was a man of multifarious read- 
ing, but inaccurate scholarship, or, as Bentley more 
forcibly expressed it, of f monstrous appetite and bad 
digestion.' 



296 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

Johnson not unhappily applied to him a couplet from 
Savage — 

Here learning, blinded first and then beguiled, 
Looks dark as Ignorance, as Frenzy wild. 

He has tumbled out his intellectual spoils into his 
ponderous pages with endless prodigality. Starting 
with the professed intention of proving the Divine 
authority of Moses, he diverges into all manner of 
subsidiary enquiries. He discourses at length on the 
origin and nature of morality; he gives the true 
theory of the alliance of Church and State ; he devotes 
many pages to elucidating the sixth book of the 
' JEneid,' and the nature of the ancient mysteries ; he 
discusses the origin of writing and the meaning of 
hieroglyphics ; he investigates the chronology of Egypt; 
he runs up an elaborate argument to determine the 
date of the Book of Job ; he assails all manner of 
freethinkers, orthodox divines, Jews, Turks, Socinians, 
classical scholars, antiquarians, and historians, who 
happen to differ with him on some subsidiary question. 
At every stage in the argument some new vista of 
controversy opens before us; but every phenomenon 
in the universe, so it is said, is more or less connected 
with every other; and Warburton easily finds an 
excuse for rambling from one end of the whole field of 
human knowledge to the other, whenever there is an 
adversary to be encountered, or an instance of his 
reading to be illustrated, or, in short, any kind of 
caprice to be gratified. It is no wonder that a man 



WARBURTON. 297 

pursuing so vast a plan, and stirring up so many 
hostile prejudices at every step, wearied of his task 
before its conclusion, and dropped into calm episcopal 
repose long before the edifice had received its crown- 
ing ornaments, 

The whole method involves an assumption, which is 
accepted, though seldom so ostentatiously put forward, 
by the so-called evidential school. Warburton main- 
tains, in a curious passage, that it is as possible to 
make discoveries in religion as in science (VI. 228); 
but, as usual, his discoveries savour more of a legal 
than a scientific investigation. The truth of a religious 
doctrine is to be decided by a judicial enquiry. The 
devil's advocates are to be upset by the sudden 
turning up of some new bit of evidence or a novel 
interpretation of an old statute. Or we may consider 
the contest between the two parties as resembling a 
game of chess. Warburton is the discoverer of a new 
gambit (I apologise if my terms are wrong), which is 
to give the adversary a most unexpected checkmate. 
It had always been assumed that if one side were 
deprived of a leading piece, victory would incline to 
the other. Warburton shows how the apparent dis- 
advantage may be converted, by skilful manipulation, 
into a means of assured triumph. The infidel pressing 
on in the highest security, suddenly finds himself, as 
it were, stalemated, and the game is, in vulgar language, 
pulled out of the fire. The position, in fact, was this. 
Deists, so he assures us, had made a great point of the 



298 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPJEAKING. 

supposed absence from the Old Testament of any distinct 
reference to a future life. Apologists of Christianity 
had been pat to rather awkward shifts, and had endea- 
voured, by forced interpretations, to relieve the Bible 
from this imputation. Warburton's discovery consisted 
in a new argument, by which the absence of the promise 
of immortality was to be admitted, but to be converted 
into what his title characteristically describes as a 
6 demonstration ' of the truth of the Mosaic religion. 
For this purpose he erects his demonstration — one, as 
he informs us, which falls ( very little short of mathe- 
matical certainty, and to which nothing but a mere 
physical possibility of the contrary can be opposed ■ 
(I. 199) — on three very clear and simple propositions. 
The first is, that the doctrine of a future state of 
rewards and punishments is necessary to the well-being 
of society ; the second, that the utility of this doctrine 
has been acknowledged by all mankind, and pre- 
eminently by the wisest and most learned nations of 
antiquity ; the third, that this doctrine was not to be 
found in the Mosaic dispensation. Hence, he says, 
one would think that ( we might proceed directly to 
our conclusion that therefore the law of Moses is of 
divine original ' (I. 200). Yet as some persons may 
be stupid enough to miss the logic of this argument, 
he draws it out more fully in elaborate syllogisms. 
Substantially they come to this. Moses would not 
have omitted a sanction which he knew to be essential, 
unless he had the certainty of a miraculous interference. 



WABBURTON. 299 

The statement that he ventured into the Desert without 
any adequate provision of food, might, perhaps, be 
urged as a proof that he reckoned upon a supply of 
quails and manna : and in the same way, the fact that 
he started his legislation without so essential a spiritual 
provision as a belief in hell, is taken by T\ r arburton to 
show that he knew that a supernatural substitute for 
hell would be provided. What that was will be seen 
directly. Meanwhile, grotesque as the argument 
sounds when thus bluntly expressed, it may yet be 
said that, after all, it is scarcely more than a caricature 
of a highly respectable and still surviving line of argu- 
ment. Some modern apologists are fond of arguing 
that Christianity was revolting to the ordinary mind, 
in order to prove that its success was miraculous. 
They are afraid to admit that it was adapted to the 
wants of the time, lest its growth should be regarded 
as spontaneous. And, therefore, they do their best to 
prove that human nature is naturally revolted by 
purity and humility, just as AVarburton declared it to 
be so corrupt that nothing but the fear of hell could 
preserve it from utter decay. 

The argument of the i Divine Legation' is drawn into 
so elaborate a system, that any complete account of it 
would be impossible within moderate limits. Probably, 
however, it will be enough to notice two or three of its 
critical and characteristic points. Thus the whole 
edifice obviously rests on the assumption that nothing 
but a belief in a future world can make men moral. 



300 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

The very fact which Warburton seeks to explain 
would apparently confute the theory at once. The 
Jews, he says, knew nothing of a future world ; yet 
the Jewish economy prospered. Therefore, is the 
natural inference, the belief is unnecessary. No, says 
Warburton in substance. The facts contradict my 
theory ; therefore, the facts are miraculous. His 
reliance upon the infallibility of an a priori argument, 
or rather upon a round assertion, gives at once the 
key to the whole character of the book. Warburton's 
attempt to prove the necessity of the doctrine in 
question is, in fact, as feeble as most of his speculative 
flights. It amounts simply to asserting in a great 
many words, that human beings will not be virtuous 
unless they are paid for it in another world. Neither 
a moral sense, nor a perception of the eternal fitness 
of things, will be sufficient motives without the obli- 
gation of a superior will. Nothing else, indeed, can 
6 make actions moral, i.e., such as deserve reward and 
punishment.' In this view of morality, Warburton is 
of course merely anticipating Paley, and expressing 
the most current opinion of his time. No one, how- 
ever, will dispute the originality of his application of 
the doctrine. That Moses, being well acquainted 
with the vital importance of the belief — for Warburton 
always speaks as if Moses was a highly intelligent 
politician of the eighteenth century, and fully 
acquainted with all its heresies — should have omitted 
to preach it, is sufficiently strange. But the paradox, 



WARBTTRTON. " 301 

pretty enough as it stands, is heightened by a further 
argument. The ancient philosophers, as he informs 
us, generally disbelieved the doctrine, and yet syste- 
matically preached it for its utility. And thus we 
have the strange phenomenon that the one inspired 
teacher of the world neglected to preach, and all the 
false teachers elaborately preached, the doctrine on 
which morality essentially depends, and in both cases 
acted in opposition to their real belief. 

In endeavouring to account for the singular fact, 
that a man of great intellectual vigour should have 
cheated himself into a state of mind so far resembling 
a genuine belief in this grotesque paradox as to stake 
his reputation on maintaining it — it is better not to 
decide how close a resemblance to belief that fact 
implies — we come to the best illustration of the stage 
of opinion at which he had arrived. Sir John Lub- 
bock has lately observed that the best test of civilisa- 
tion is the conception which a race is able to form of 
the Deity. This remark may be extended far beyond 
savages. In one of his fierce assaults upon Bolingbroke, 
Warburton says, ( I should choose to have the clergy's 
God, though made of no better stuff than artificial 
theology (because this gives him both justice and 
goodness), rather than his Lordship's God, who has 
neither, although composed of the most refined mate- 
rials of the first philosophy. In the meantime, I will 
not deny that he may be right in what he says, that 
men conceive of the Deity more humano, and that his 



302 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN&PEAKING. 

Lordship's God and the clergy's God are equally- 
faithful copies of themselves.' (II. 254.) Warburton's 
view of the Mosaic dispensation will enable us to form 
a tolerably adequate portrait of this deity, formed of 
artificial theology, who was a e faithful copy ' of the 
Bishop of Gloucester. If any word, unintentionally 
savouring of irreverence, should escape me in such an 
attempt, I must beg for pardon on the ground that I 
am only endeavouring to tread in episcopal footsteps. 

We have already seen that the Warburtonian deity 
served in the first place as an omnipotent and su- 
pernatural Chief Justice. His duty was to sentence 
to condign punishment the Bolingbrokes, Spinoza s, 
Tindals, and all other offenders against morality. But 
there is, at first sight, a capriciousness in his behaviour 
towards the Jews, for which, as the author of the 
hypothesis is silent, it is difficult to account. War- 
burton promised to clear the matter up to the meanest 
comprehension in the final book of the * Divine Lega- 
tion.' Unluckily, he became too weary of his work 
ever to finish up the argument satisfactorily. Even 
Archdeacon Towne, one of Warburton's humble 
friends, who was pronounced by the bishop to under- 
stand his works better than their author, is grieved at 
this omission. He can only make the rather lame 
remark, ( It is certain that a system may be true and 
well-founded, notwithstanding objections to it never 
have been and never can be answered.' He admits 
that adversaries will triumph, and will even urge that 



WARBURTON. 303 

the bishop could not answer the difficulties he had 
raised. Nothing is more probable : but, declining the 
task of accounting for that which the faithful Towne 
admits to be unaccountable, we may observe and 
wonder at the fact. For some reason, then, the Deity 
resolved to manage the Jews on a peculiar system ; 
or, as Warburton calls it, by an extraordinary Provi- 
dence. The meaning of which words appears to be as 
follows : — The ordinary human being is punished or 
rewarded in a future world according to his merits in 
this. In the case of the Jews, however, a system of 
cash payments was adopted. Every man had his 
accounts finally settled before death; and therefore 
the necessity of any belief in a future world, or indeed, 
as it would seem, of a future world at all, was entirely 
obviated. The proof that so marvellous a state of 
things actually existed, is touched with characteristic 
lightness. ( It would be absurd,' he says, e to quote 
particular texts, when the whole Bible is one continued 
proof of it.' But his knockdown argument is as usual 
of the a priori kind ; it must have been so, ( for a 
people in society, without both a future state and an 
equal Providence ' (that is, a Providence equally 
working in this world), ( could have no belief in the 
moral government of God,' and would have relapsed 
into a savage state. Thus, as the Jews had no future 
state, they must have had an equal Providence. Q. 
E. D. Perhaps this heresy is the supreme expression 
of the popular creed, that the Bible generally refers 



304 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAK1NG. 

to a state of things altogether beside and apart from 
anything that comes within our ordinary experience. 
As Warburton naively says in attacking Plutarch, 
c we know (though he did not) that all things ' (in the 
Jewish history) e were extraordinary, and nothing to 
be brought to example, any more than to imitation.' 
(IV. 243.) "Warburton has an unequalled talent for 
caricaturing the most absurd opinions. 

There are, however, some difficulties in realising so 
strange a condition. One or two corollaries from 
his doctrine require elaborate defence. Thus, for 
example, the Deity found it necessary to adopt certain 
regulations which savour of hardship. Though he 
punished evil-doers in this world, there are some ( men 
of stronger complexions superior to all the fear of 
personal temporal evil.' The knowledge that an 
Almighty power would punish them, a knowledge 
which, as he assures us, rested on the immediate 
evidence of their senses, would not keep them out of 
mischief. And, therefore, these hardened persons were 
to be reached through their ' instinctive fondness of 
parents to their offspring.' (V. 164.) That a man 
who would not be restrained by the fear of tortures 
inflicted by an Almighty ruler, should be restrained 
out of love for his children, is strange doctrine in 
Warburton's mouth ; but the morality of the proceed- 
ing is still more questionable than its efficiency. "War- 
burton's explanation on this head is characteristic. 
God, he says, was here acting, not as the Almighty 



WARBURTOK 305 

governor of the universe, but as the e civil governor ' 
of the Jews. In a theocracy sins were treasonable. 
' Now we know it to be the practice of all States 
to punish the crime of leze-majesty in this manner. 
And, to render it just, no more is required than that 
it was in the compact (as it certainly was here) on 
men's free entrance into society.' (V. 167.) He 
proceeds to defend the system more fully by appealing 
to the English laws of forfeiture for hioii treason. 
In short, God Almighty would have been perfectly 
justified for his conduct under the Britith constitution, 
-and what more could the Deist require ? 

Other difficulties, of course, abound when it is 
attempted to work out the details of this remarkable 
system. What, for example, was to become of the 
Jews in another world, after receiving their full re- 
compense in this ? How could future punishments or 
rewards be fair? Bolingbroke made a great point of 
this objection ; and War burton blusters more than 
usualin seeking to evade it. In the case of future 
punishments, he escapes, according to the ordinary 
theological device, by admitting that it is a mystery, 
I and boasting of his admission as a complete solution of 
the difficulty. As to rewards, he says that he does 
•not grudge the Jews the advantage of being paid 
twice over. To a similar difficulty as to the fate of 
men in the ages before Moses, he calmly invents f a 
secret reprieve ' (kept ( hid, indeed, from the early 
world,' and, it may be added, from everybody till the 

x 



506 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

days of Warburton) s passed along with the sentence 
of condemnation. So that they who never received 
their due in this world would still be kept in 
existence till they had received it in the next ; such 
being in no other sense sufferers by the administration 
of an unequal Providence than in being ignorant of 
the reparation which attended them.' God is thus 
supposed to have acted like some of the kings a few 
centuries ago, who, whilst agreeing to a treaty in 
public, made a private reservation for breaking it at 
their own convenience. 

The God of Warburton, in fact, may be regarded 
as occupying a position towards the universe some- 
thing like that of George III. towards the British 
people. Speaking generally, he was a constitutional 
ruler with a scrupulous regard for the exigencies of 
his position ; he resorted to miracles as little as possible, 
just as a king would seldom bring his personal in- 
fluence to bear; but in certain cases which, so far 
as human knowledge can reveal, were capriciously 
selected, he chose to govern, as well as to reign, and 
his action in those cases brought about a variety of 
complicated relations which it taxes all Warburton 's 
legal skill to unravel. Once, after a long argument des- 
tined to vindicate the 6 wisdom, purity, and justice ' of 
the Almighty, he asks pathetically : ( How can I hope 
to be heard in the defence of this conduct of the God 
of Israel, when even the believing part of those whom 
I oppose seem to pay so little attention to the reason- 



WARBURTON. 307 

ing of Jesus Himself? ' (IV. 323.) And, truly, it 
is rather a sad case for his clients when Warburton has 
to appear as the only counsel for the defence. The 
extraordinary perplexity of his system is due in part 
to that metaphysical conception of the law of nature 
which assumes great prominence in Warburton. This 
was, in fact, the common law of the universe, and, like 
that of England, was supposed to be a concrete em- 
bodiment of the perfection of wisdom. Its details, 
moreover, were capable of being marked out with 
mathematical accuracy, and Warburton has ascer- 
tained its precise provisions with a minuteness which 
is not a little astonishing. It is, for example, rather odd 
at the present day to find a man declaring, and that in 
capital letters — a favourite device with Warburton — 
that f an Established Keligion, with a test Law, 
is the universal voice of nature.' (II. 292.) The 
original compact between the Church and State is 
drawn out in all its provisions with the accuracy of a 
conveyancer ; and it is probable that no other human 
being ever discovered that a test law was an immediate 
consequence of the eternal fitness of things. The law 
of nature, however, has more bearing upon Warbur- 
ton's main purpose in another direction. The essence 
of all religion, as he frequently states, is a belief in the 
divine system of rewards and punishments ; a propo- 
sition which he generally illustrates by St. Paul's 
words, containing, as he thinks, the most concise 
statement of natural religion, that God is a ( rewarder 

x 2 



308 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN8PJSAKING. 

of them who diligently seek Him.' (III. 323.) But 
it does not follow on principles of natural religion, 
that punishments or rewards should be more than 
temporary. With characteristic audacity he goes so 
far as to assert that the notion of eternal penalties, 
instead of being discoverable by the unassisted reason, 
is absolutely revolting to it; and that ( fancy even 
when full plumed by vanity ' (VI. 251) could scarcely 
rise to the idea of infinite rewards. Some kind of 
future state might, he thinks, be inferred by the light 
of nature ; but we could know nothing as to its con- 
ditions ; and the doctrine of immortality, which is the 
most essential spirit of the Christian revelation was 
rather repulsive than probable. When, therefore, the 
Almighty interferes by his direct action with the con- 
stitutional laws of the universe, a distinction has to be 
drawn, like that between the king as a person and 
the crown as a mere official figment. The results are 
complicated in the extreme. Mankind, for example, 
occupied a different legal position in regard to their 
Maker before the Fall, and in the interval between 
the Fall and the appearance of Moses ; and the di- 
vine prerogatives differed as they affected Jews and 
Gentiles. The great change took place when the 
Almighty f took upon Himself the office of Supreme 
Magistrate of the Jewish people.' As we have seen, 
he resolved for some inscrutable reason to govern them 
by temporal instead of eternal punishments, and it is 
a delicate problem to say how this would affect their 



WARBURTON. 309 

position in the world to come. He e proceeded/ says 
TTarburton, ' on the most equitable grounds of civil 
government ; ' he became king (of the Jews) ( by free 
choice ; ' and he thus acquired certain privileges,, as, 
for example, that of prosecuting idolaters as traitors. 
As, however, direct punishments, even when inflicted 
upon posterity, proved to be inadequate, he enacted 
a cumbrous ceremonial destined to distract popular 
attention from the claims of pretenders, that is to say, 
of false gods. A certain Herman Witsius had the 
audacity to say that this theory implied that God 
stood in need of the f tricks of crafty politicians ' (IV. 
323) ; and Warburton admits that the wisdom thus 
displayed was identical in kind, though different in 
degree, from ' what we call human policy.' He 
excuses it on the ground that God used his miracu- 
lous power as little as possible (a very convenient 
theological principle), though he is arguing at the 
same time that all Jewish history is one stupendous 
miracle. The difficulties, however, increase. After a 
time God appointed an f under-agent or instrument ; ' 
the Jewish kings became his viceroys ; and Warburton 
has to prove at length that the change did not alter 
the essence of the form of government. David, he 
says, was called the man after God's own heart, 
because he ' seconded God's views in support of the 
theocracy.' (IV. 312.) He was, in fact, like Lord 
Bute, a thoroughgoing King's friend. Although the 
Jews persisted in behaving badly, they could not 



810 FREETHINKING AND PLAINS PEAKING. 

withdraw from the covenant, which occupied the place 
of the original contract in the theocracy ; for it is 
against all principles of equity that one party to a 
bargain should be allowed to repudiate it at pleasure. 
God, therefore, retained his rights ; but, in conse- 
sequence of the misbehaviour of his subjects, he de- 
clined to exercise them. Thus we have the curious 
result that, although the theocracy was still existing 
de jure, it ceased to operate de facto. Penalties and 
rewards were no longer exacted in this world, and 
though no revelation had hitherto been made of a fu- 
ture life, the prophets began to discover its existence. 
From this fact we may discover, amongst other things, 
the precise date of the Book of Job. The great pur- 
pose of that book is to discuss the difficult problem 
raised by the prosperity of the wicked and the mis- 
fortunes of the virtuous ; and, as Warburton says, no 
satisfactory conclusion is reached. It must therefore 
have been written just at the point of time when 
rewards and punishments ceased to be administered in 
this world, and when the existence of another world 
failed to obtain recognition. Gradually, however, the 
new doctrine became clear ; till the theocracy was 
finally broken up, and the Almighty ceased to be, as 
Warburton calls it, the ' family God of the race of 
Abraham,' or, as he elsewhere puts it, the ( tutelary 
deity, gentilitial and local,' and became simply the 
constitutional ruler of the universe, governing only 
through second causes and interfering directly only 



WARBURTON. 311. 

upon critical occasions. The new set of obligations 
introduced by the Christian dispensation need not be 
noticed ; but the general nature of the theory is, per- 
haps, sufficiently clear. Man, it is plain, stands in 
all kinds of varying relations to his Maker. Some of 
his claims are dependent upon law, and others upon 
equity ; sometimes he must stick to the terms of a 
particular bargain, and occasionally he may go upon 
the general principles of the law of nature ; immor- 
tality is a free gift (sometimes, it must be said, of very 
questionable benefit), and may therefore be granted, 
subject to any regulations which the Giver may please 
to impose ; some kind of future reward is a strict legal 
right, and must necessarily be granted on condition of 
repentance ; persecution is lawful under a theocracy, 
and becomes intolerable in all other circumstances 
where the voice of nature imperatively demands a test- 
law, but forbids any more stringent discouragement of 
dissent ; eternal punishment is detestably cruel if we 
depend upon ordinary reasoning, but quite justifiable 
if it has been the subject of a revelation ; and the 
Jews w T ere governed by God Almighty on principles 
of (as human intelligence would say) a most eccentric 
kind, varying naturally at different stages of their 
history, and totally different from anything that 
has prevailed before or since. Warburton's modest, 
though not very orthodox, conclusion, that they could 
not be adduced as a warning or an example, is amply 
justified. Mr. Matthew Arnold says that Calvinists 



312 FREETHINXING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

and Arminians think of God as of a man in the next 
street. Warburton seems to have improved upon the 
definition, and regarded him as a very shrewd, but 
rather capricious lawyer, dwelling at about the same 
distance. Certainly, the attorney's clerk did not lose 
the marks of his early training. 

One other peculiarity of Warburton's theories must 
be considered, to give anything like a complete picture 
of the singular logical edifice in which he trusted. 
Among his innumerable controversies one of the most 
vehement was his assault upon Wesley. In the course 
of it he remarks that ( the power of working miracles, 
and not the conformity of Scripture doctrines to the 
truth, is the great criterion of a divine mission.' (VIII. 
390.) Accordingly we find throughout that he has an 
intense affection for a miracle, tempered by a strong 
desire to show that all other people take erroneous 
views of any particular miracle alleged. In his de- 
fence, for example, of the supposed miracle wrought 
to prevent Julian's reconstruction of the Temple at 
Jerusalem, he argues valiantly for the truth of the 
main incident. He is almost equally anxious to prove 
that certain subsidiary phenomena were not miraculous. 
For example, it is stated that crosses appeared in the 
sky and on the garments of the spectators. He pro- 
duces some curious instances, which I commend to 
the consideration of natural philosophers, where such 
crosses are said to have actually appeared in con- 
sequence of a thunderstorm and an eruption of 



WARBURTON. 313 

Vesuvius. But the main facts be stoutly maintains 
must have been miraculous. ( The Fathers/ he says, 
c are so impatient to be at their favourite miracles, 
the crosses in the sky and on the garments, that they 
slip negligently over what ought principally to have 
been insisted on, the fiery eruption; and leave what 
was truly miraculous, to run after an imaginary 
prodigy.' (VIII. 138.) The poor Fathers who 
believe too much and the poor infidels who believe 
too little are equally censured ; though it seems rather 
hard to expect the Fathers to have known of events 
which happened in the seventeenth century. The 
same eccentricity appears in his other writings. He 
seems actually to have believed in an absurd prophecy 
said to have been uttered by one Arise Evans under 
the Commonwealth, though he admits the said Evans 
to have been a notorious rogue ; and he published a 
preface to one of Jortin's works containing an inter- 
pretation of its meaning. But when poor Wesley 
was rash enough to publish those accounts of miracles 
with which his journals are so curiously stuiFed, the 
episcopal wrath knew no bounds. That a man living 
in the eighteenth century, and that man a rebel against 
the Church of England, should produce a few wretched 
miracles to confirm his foolish fancies was indeed 
intolerable. To pass over his ridicule, some of which 
is not unfairly bestowed, or at least would not be 
unfair in the mouth of a man who had not exaggerated 
the sphere of the miraculous beyond all other writers. 



314 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

his ending arguments are exquisitely characteristic. 
Perhaps the true secret slips out in a very naive 
remark. Miracles, he says, are no longer required. 
Something was wanted to support the martyrs in the 
early ages ; ( but now the profession of the Christian 
faith is attended icith ease and honour; and the 
conviction which the weight of human testimony and 
the conclusions of human reason afford us, of its truth, 
is abundantly sufficient to support us in our religious 
perseverance.' (VIII. 319.) It is, in fact, easy 
enough to persevere when the defence of Christianity 
is the direct road to a bishopric ; but Wesley must 
have smiled at the quiet assumption that Warburton 
rather than the poor Methodists presented the closest 
analogy to the early Christian martyrs. His great 
argument, however, is even more to the purpose. 
His treatise on The Doctrine of Grace is, like most 
others, ambidextrous. He cannot be satisfied unless 
he is hitting the freethinker with one hand and the 
enthusiast with the other. Accordingly, he begins by 
assailing Middleton at great length for having main- 
tained that the gift of tongues was temporary. He 
argues that, far from disappearing after the first 
occasion of its manifestation, it persisted through the 
whole apostolic age. But, having overthrown this 
antagonist, he is not less vigorous against the other 
antagonist who goes upon diametrically opposite 
sentiments. His method is the old and simple one 
of interpreting a single text of Scripture as if 



WARBJJRTON. 315 

it were a clause in an Act of Parliament ; and, as 
Wesley had no difficulty in showing in his very calm 
reply, he violates the sense in the most palpable 
manner. The decisive passage, he says, is this : 
6 Charity never faileth ; but whether there be pro- 
phecies, they shall fail ; whether there be tongues 
they shall cease ; whether there be knowledge, it shall 
vanish away.' This passage, after being put through 
the Warburtonian mill, comes out as follows : — ' The 
virtue of charity is to accompany the Christian Church 
through all its stages here on earth, whereas the gifts 
of prophecy, of strange tongues, of supernatural know- 
ledge, are only transitory graces, bestowed upon the 
Church during its infirm and infant state, to manifest 
its divine birth and to support it against the delusions 
of the powers of darkness.' (VIII. 309.) He explains 
the statement that ( when that which is perfect shall 
come, then that which is in part shall be done away ? 
in the same spirit ; perfection, it appears, being attained 
when the apostolic age had ceased ; and he thus has 
the pleasure of administering a smart blow in passing 
at one additional enemy, the unlucky Church of Rome, 
in whose pretences, he observes, i the blunder seems 
to be as glaring as the imposture.' (VIII. 315.) 
On such grounds the man who held that the whole 
Jewish history was one continued miracle for many 
centuries, and who was willing to believe in the ab- 
surdities of Arise Evans, denounces Wesley for his 
folly and impiety in believing that God doubtless 



316 FREETHINKING AND PLA1NSPEAKING. 

interfered in the eighteenth century as He had done 
in the first. It would be difficult to find a better 
explanation of the influence of Wesley than in the 
contrast thus exhibited between the man who really 
believed that his creed represented an active and 
living power, and the man who thought that the same 
power had left the world to itself for many hundred 
years, inasmuch as good kings now supplied by 
patronage the zeal which was formerly produced by 
miracles. 

Yet, in spite of all his unfairness, his coarseness, 
his paradoxes, and the perverse audacity of his whole 
writings, I feel a sneaking affection for some of War- 
burton's productions. He lays about him with such 
vigour ; he tumbles out his miscellaneous reading with 
such apparent fulness of mind; he ventures so gallantly 
into the breach to meet any and every assailant ; that, 
though one knows him to be as empty of sound judg- 
ment as he is blustering in claiming infallibility, he 
exercises a kind of queer attraction. The ( Divine 
Legation ' is often intolerably pompous, and often 
lengthened beyond the endurance of human patience ; 
yet, by judicious skipping, this big book is more 
endurable than most works of theological contro- 
versy ; not for its genuine merits, for probably it 
advances no new proposition which is at once new 
and true ; but from the variety of its contents and 
the courage of its ingenious blundering. It may be 
studied with some profit by the lovers of eccentric 



WARBUETON. 317 

productions of the human intellect, and by those 
who would see an unintentional caricature of the 
tendencies of the age. Nor is it without some 
meaning in view of more modern developments of 
theological reasoning. 

Warburton, in fact, was only accepting a com- 
promise characteristic of a certain stage of theological 
development though he expresses its terms with a 
clumsy exaggeration peculiar to himself. Any one who 
now disinters the half-decayed remnants of the English 
deistic controversy will frequently meet with the same 
phenomenon. The arguments to be found in their 
writings are still familiar to us, though now generally 
disguised in a more pretentious phraseology and en- 
forced by wider knowledge and superior methods of 
criticism. It is interesting to trace in the first rough 
sketches of an artist the purpose which is sometimes 
less distinctly visible in his finished work ; and in those 
comparatively crude attempts to settle the vital prob- 
lems of theology, whilst we find much that has become 
obsolete, we gain something by the absence of the 
more refined artifices employed by later artists in 
order to deceive the eye and dexterously soften harsh 
contrasts of opinion. Our ancestors, it may be, had 
heavy hands and clumsy fingers, but their angular 
outlines bring out aspects of the truth which are but too 
easily lost from sight under the vast multiplicity of 
details added by their successors. 

Shaftesbury, Mandeville, and Warburton are fair 



818 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

representatives of their typical forms of belief, each of 
which survives under different forms, though neither 
Shaftesbury's pedantry, nor Mandeville's cynicism, nor 
Warburton's brutality would be endured at the present 
day. The long controversies between Protestants and 
Romanists had died away leaving behind them the 
natural legacy of scepticism on the one side confronted 
by dogmatism on the other. Bossuet's ( Histoire 
des Variations ' gives the Catholic conclusion that 
truth being unattainable by reason, all controversies 
should be submitted to the infallible tribunal of the 
Church. Locke's ' Reasonableness of Christianity,' 
which appeared almost at the same time, represents the 
more logical and manly conclusion generally accepted 
by the Protestant writers. From the endless diver- 
gence of opinion over which their great adversary 
triumphed, they inferred that unity was to be reached, 
not by an appeal to arbitrary authority, but by admit- 
ting difference of opinion upon all minor points, and 
accepting as established only those doctrines which 
approved themselves to all fair reasoners. The prin- 
ciple was excellent : but the application was difficult. 
Extend the old Catholic dogma, Quod semper, quod 
ubique, quod ab omnibus, by including all Christians 
under omnes, and how stop short of Socinianism ? Or 
admit the ancient philosophers and the Chinese, and 
pure deism, if even deism must be the final refuge. 
"What is your list of fundamentals ? had been the 
old Romanist taunt ; within what sphere is salvation 



WARBURTON. 319 

possible ? And Bossuet tries to drive his opponents to 
the blasphemous and absurd conclusion that heathens 
and Socinians might escape hell-fire. The proposition 
intended as a reductio ad absurdum was soon accepted 
as a primary axiom ; but the difficulty reccurred in 
another form. Allow that no sect has a monoply of 
salvation, and how can it be supposed that it has a 
monoply of truth ? Where is the core of sound doctrine 
common to all creeds, or is there any core ? Stripping 
off the non-essential dogmas one by one shall we 
not come to absolute vacancy ? 

The answer given by the rationalist divines and by 
such deists as Toland and Tindal was substantially that 
those doctrines were of universal obligation which were 
susceptible of a quasi-mathematical demonstration. 
They endeavoured to construct an absolutely flawless 
body of doctrine, in which every proportion was 
deducible by invulnerable reasons from self-evident 
principles. This system of truth known as the Religion 
of Nature was admitted on both sides to be demonstra- 
ble to all rational beings, and therefore to be univer- 
sally binding. The divines tried to prove that the 
revealed followed from the natural religion as an easy 
corollary ; the deists inferred that it was a superfluous 
excrescence. The doctrine, however, of the two schools 
was substantially identical. It rested on the basis of 
a demonstration by abstract reasoning of the existence 
of God and His attributes, and it really mattered little 
whether or not some corollaries were added expressed 



320 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

in Christian phraseology but carefully accommodated 
to the system of which they were to form a part. 

Shaftesbury is the deistical writer who labours most 
strenuously to breathe some vitality into the theory 
thus constructed. Throwing as much as possible into 
obscurity the frigid mathematical formulae in which 
Clarke delighted, he succeeds in casting a certain glow 
of poetical fervour over the barren framework of an 
abstract theology. He regards nature with at least a 
fair imitation of the reverence generated by the con- 
templation of a more accessible Deity. His eloquence, 
compressed into Pope's brilliant couplets, furnishes a 
considerable part of the ( Essay on Man ' which with 
all its faults, poetical and philosophical, is perhaps 
the best statement of the prevalent creed of the day. 
Such a creed, however ornamented, was not destined 
to stability. The Deity has become a mere metaphysical 
abstraction ; God is lost in nature, the universal and in- 
different, and ceases to take any active part in the world. 
The supernatural is banished from the universe, and 
all that remains is a bare code of morality and a vague 
sentiment of reverence for the absolute and the 
inconceivable. The central figure retires imperceptibly 
from Sinai to heaven and from heaven into the bound- 
less spaces of the universe, and theology expires by a 
gentle euthanasia. 

Deism of the constructive kind wanted any true 
vitality. It disappeared not only from its inherent 
weakness, but from the gradual decay of its old 



WABBVBTON. 321 

metaphysical foundation under the attacks of Locke 
and his successors. Divines were naturally suspicious 
of the rival religion of nature which threatened to 
absorb the religion of revelation and, the general spirit 
of the century led them to acknowledge the 
supremacy of Locke. This tendency produced the 
evidential school, of which Warburton is the most 
grotesque representative. Without denying the validity 
of the argument from the internal value of Christianity 
they yet laid more stress on the historical proof. They 
still boasted of their rationalism, but endeavoured to 
depress the claims of so treacherous an ally. Reason 
was to be admitted to prove the facts, but it played at 
most a subsidiary part in proving the doctrine, of 
Christianity ; and hence arose Bolingbroke's so-called 
alliance between the divines and the Atheists which ex- 
ercised "Warburton's whole polemical energy. Though 
Warburton's wins a verbal, and in this case something 
more than a verbal, victory, there is a real meaning in 
Bolingbroke's taunt. The orthodox argument had in 
part a strangely sceptical colouring. Butler's familiar 
reasoning is merely a wider application of an often 
trodden line of defence. The objections to revealed 
religion were, it was urged, equally applicable to natu- 
ral religion. The revelations of nature were as partial 
as the revelations of Jehovah. If the Bible was granted 
to the Jews alone, a knowledge of natural religion 
was granted only to a few civilized philosophers. The 
full expression of this theory resulted in a strange com- 

Y 



322 FREETHINK1NG AND PL AINSPE AXING. 

promise. The present was surrendered to the sceptics. 
It was admitted that no decisive traces of Divine agency 
could be found in the actually existing world. But 
whilst this view was admitted, an attempt was made to 
retain for the believer the dim and remote past. The 
divines, it may almost be said, maintained whilst the 
sceptics denied that there was sufficient evidence to 
prove that there once was a God ; and, in the absence 
of any sufficient evidence to the contrary, it might be 
assumed that He still existed. The most revolting and 
the most grotesque results eventually flow from such 
a divorce between the two worlds. Theology takes 
a perfectly arbitrary character. Historical evidence 
may as well prove a supreme devil as a supreme God. 
The miracles alleged in favour of the existence of 
Jehovah might have served equally well to prove the 
existence cf Moloch. Orthodox divines such as 
Waterland, justified the massacre of the Canaanites 
and other Old Testament atrocities on the simple 
ground that God might do as he liked with his own. 
Now, as everything is his and as we have no indepen- 
dent means of judging of his opinions, any action 
justified by miracles is unimpeachable. Many of the 
arguments thus advanced read like satire ; and 
Yoltaire has only to repeat Waterland and to add a 
covert sneer to convert the apologist into the bitterest 
enemy of the Jewish theology. 

Warburton, with his audacity in proclaiming as dis- 



WABBURTON. 323 

coveries what others would take to be a reductio ad 
absurdum of his theory, gives the most singular 
development to this mode of reasoning. He explicitly 
avows the doctrine that there is no common measure 
between the past and the present. Grod, according to 
him, was once the ruler of a class and has now become 
governor of the universe. The Jews really lived in a 
world so unlike to this, that no argument can be 
drawn from one to the other. Such doctrines and the 
odd corollaries of which I have given some specimens, 
may be made to correspond roughly to the sceptical 
view by applying to opinions what is said of facts. 
He argues like a caricatured positivist who should 
maintain that the world was once ruled by fetishes, 
afterwards by a number of gods, and then by one 
supreme God. Substantially admitting that the old 
conceptions were unworthy of acceptance in modern 
times, he yet maintains that they once corresponded 
to an objective reality. He calmly contradicts the 
fundamental canon of historical criticism which asserts 
that the laws now operative in the world operated 
through the whole period under observation. The 
fallacy is, of course, now easy of detection and represents 
the extreme point reached by a hopeless attempt at 
putting together two incoherent systems. Faith and 
reason can no more divide the world in time than they 
divide the existing world into two different spheres. 
And yet it would be easy to show that the same fallacy 

Y 2 



324 FREETHINKING AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

prevails in most modern theology ; and that men 
familiar with modern criticism still cover under 
philosophical language about the education of the race, 
a theory that the Divine government was somehow or 
other very different 2,000 or 3,000 years ago, from 
what it is now. The doctrine of catastrophes lingers 
in theology though it is being expelled from geology. 
Nature, it was once supposed, worked in primitive 
times by convulsions, and now by the slow operation 
of less energetic forces ; and so Warburton believed in 
a God who was once a despot, enforcing his commands 
by miracles, and who had now become a constitutional 
King relying chiefly on the influence of Church 
preferment. 

The great reaction against this mechanical system 
of which Wesley was the mouthpiece, asserted the 
continued action of the Deity upon the world and the 
souls of men, but it was a creation rather of sentiment 
than of reason ; and left no trace on the intellectual 
development of the time. That which Mandeville re- 
presented was the conclusion of the ordinary rough 
common sense of mankind. Agreeing with Warburton 
m denying the validity of the deistic interpretation of 
existing facts, he saw no use in cumbering his mind 
with outworn fables about the e gentilitial deity ' of a 
barbarous clan. His protest against Shaftesbury and 
his like, cynical as it is, yet involves the eternal truth 
that men cannot live upon moonshine alone. Un- 



WARBURTON. 325 

fortunately he accepted the alternative,, that man could 
live contentedly upon garbage. But it was inevitable 
that a complete scepticism, not only as to dogmatic 
theologies, but as to all the ennobling beliefs with which 
theology had been associated, should be the result 
of setting up so withered an idol for the worship of 
mankind. 



326 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 



CHAPTER IX. 

AN APOLOGY FOE PLAINSPEAKING. 

All who would govern their intellectual course by no 
other aim than the discovery of truth, and who would 
use their faculty of speech for no other purpose than 
open communications of their real opinions to others 
are met by protests from various quarters. Such pro- 
tests so far as they imply cowardice or dishonesty, 
must of course be disregarded, but it would be most 
erroneous to confound all protests in the same summary 
condemnation. Reverent and kindly minds shrink 
from giving an unnecessary shock to the faith which 
comforts many sorely tried souls ; and even the most 
genuine lovers of truth may doubt whether the time 
has come at which the decayed scaffolding can be swept 
away without injuring the foundations of the edifice. 
Some reserve, they think, is necessary, though reserve, 
as they must admit, passes but too easily into 
insincerity. 

And thus, it is often said by one class of thinkers, 
Why attack a system of beliefs which is crumbling 
away quite fast enough without your help ? Why, 



AN APOLOGY FOR PLAINSPEAKING. 327 

says another class, try to shake beliefs which, whether 
true or false, are infinitely consoling to the weaker 
brethren ? I will endeavour to conclude these essays, 
in which I have possibly made myself liable to some 
such remonstrances by explaining why I should think 
it wrong to be bound by them ; I will, however, begin 
by admitting frankly that I recognise their force so 
far as this ; namely, that I have no desire to attack 
wantonly any sincere beliefs in minds unprepared for 
the reception of more complete truths. This book, 
perhaps, would be unjustifiable if it were likely to be- 
come a text-book for schoolgirls in remote country 
parsonages. But it is not very probable that it will 
penetrate to such quarters ; nor do I flatter myself 
that I have brought forward a single argument which 
is not already familiar to educated men. Whatever 
force there may be in its pages is only the force of an 
appeal to people who already agree in my conclusions 
to state their agreement in plain terms ; and, having 
said this much, I will answer the questions suggested as 
distinctly as I am able. 

To the first question, why trouble the last moments 
of a dying creed, my reply would be in brief that I do 
not desire to quench the lingering vitality of the dying 
so much as to lay the phantoms of the dead. I 
believe that one of the greatest dangers of the present 
day is the general atmosphere of insincerity in such 
matters, which is fast producing a scepticism not as to 
any or all theologies, but as to the very existence of 



328 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

intellectual good faith. Destroy credit, and you ruin 
commerce ; destroy all faith in religious honesty and 
you ruin something of infinitely more importance than 
commerce ; ideas should surely be preserved as care- 
fully as cotton from the poisonous influences of a 
varnish intended to fit them for public consumption. 
6 The time is come/ says Mr. Mill in his autobiography, 
'in which it is the duty of all qualified persons to 
speak their minds about popular religious beliefs.' 
The reason which he assigns is that they would thus 
destroy the ( vulgar prejudice ' that unbelief is con- 
nected with bad qualities of head and heart. It is, I 
venture to remark, still more important to destroy the 
belief of sceptics themselves that in these matters a 
system of pious frauds is creditable or safe. Effemi- 
nating and corrupting as all equivocation comes to be 
in the long run, there are other evils behind. Who 
can see without impatience the fearful waste of good 
purpose and noble aspiration caused by our reticence 
at a time when it is of primary importance to turn to 
account all the forces which make for the elevation of 
mankind ? How much intellect and zeal runs to waste 
in the spasmodic effort of good men to cling to the last 
fragments of decaying systems, to galvanise dead 
formulas into some dim semblance of life ! Society 
will not improve as it might when those who should 
be leaders of progress are staggering backwards and 
forwards with their eyes passionately reverted to the 
past. Nay, we shall never be duly sensitive to the 



AN APOLOGY FOR PLAINSPEAKING. 329 

miseries and cruelties .which make the world a place 
of torture for so many, so long as men are encouraged 
in the name of religion to look for a remedy not in 
fighting against surrounding evils, but in cultivating 
aimless contemplations of an imaginary ideal. Much 
of our popular religion seems to be expressly directed 
to deaden our sympathies with our fellow men by 
encouraging an indolent optimism ; our thoughts of 
the other world are used in many forms as an opiate 
to drug our minds with indifference to the evils of 
this ; and the last word of half our preachers is, dream 
rather than work. 

To the other question, Why deprive men of their 
religious consolations? I must make a rather longer 
reply. In the first place, I must observe that the 
burden of proof does not rest with me. If any one 
should tell me explicitly, a certain dogma is false, but it 
is better not to destroy it, I would not reply summarily 
that he is preaching a grossly immoral doctrine ; but 
I would only refrain from the reply because I should 
think that he does not quite mean what he says. His 
real intention, I should suppose, would be to say that 
every dogma includes some truth, or is inseparably 
associated with true statements, and that I ought to 
be careful not to destroy the wheat with the tares. 
The presumption remains, at any rate, that a false 
doctrine is so far mischievous ; and its would-be pro- 
tector is bound to show that it is impossible to assail 
it without striking through its sides at something 



330 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

beyond. If Christ is not God, the man who denies 
him to be God is certainly prima facie right, though 
it may perhaps be possible to show that such a denial 
cannot be made in practice without attacking a belief 
in morality. We may, or it is possible to assert that 
we may, be under this miserable necessity, that we 
cannot speak undiluted truth ; truth and falsehood are, 
it is perhaps maintainable, so intricately blended in 
the world that discrimination is impossible. Still the 
man who argues thus is bound to assign some grounds 
for his melancholy scepticism ; and to show further 
that the destruction of the figment is too dearly bought 
by the assertion of the truth. Therefore I might be 
content to say that, in such cases, the innocence of the 
plain speaker ought to be assumed until his guilt is 
demonstrated. If we had always waited to clear 
away shams till we were certain that our action 
would produce absolutely unmixed benefits, we should 
still be worshipping Mumbo-Jumbo. 

But, whilst claiming the advantage of this presump- 
tion, I am ready to meet the objector on his own ground, 
and to indicate, simply and inefficiently enough, the 
general nature of the reasons which convince me that 
the objection could not be sustained. To what 
degree, in fact, are these sham beliefs which un- 
doubtedly prevail so widely, a real comfort to any 
intelligent person ? Many believers have described 
the terrible agony with which they had at one period 
of their lives listened to the first whisperings of 




AN APOLOGY FOR PLAINSPEAKING. 331 

scepticism. The horror with which they speak of the 
gulf after managing to struggle back to the right side 
is supposed to illustrate the cruelty of encouraging 
others to take the plunge. That such sufferings are 
at times very real and very acute, is undeniable ; and 
yet I imagine that few who have undergone them 
would willingly have missed the experience. I ven- 
ture even to think that the recollection is one of un- 
mixed pain only in those cases in which the sufferer 
has a half-consciousness that he has not escaped by 
legitimate means. If in his despair he has clutched 
at a lie in order to extricate himself as quickly as 
possible and at any price, it is no wonder that he looks 
back with a shudder. When the disease has been 
driven inwards by throwing in abundant doses of 
Paley, Butler, with perhaps an oblique reference to 
preferment and respectability, it continues to give 
many severe twinges, and perhaps it may permanently 
injure the constitution. But, if it has been allowed 
to run its natural course, and the sufferer has reso- 
lutely rejected every remedy except fair and honest 
argument, I think that the recovery is generally 
cheering. A man looks back with something of 
honest pride at the obstacles through which he has 
forced his way to a purer and healthier atmosphere. 
But, whatever the nature of such crises generally, 
there is an obvious reason why, at the present day, the 
process is seldom really painful. The change which 
takes place is not, in fact, an abandonment of beliefs 



832 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

seriously held and firmly implanted in the mind, but a 
gradual recognition of the truth that you never really 
held them. The old husk drops off because it has 
long been withered, and you discover that beneath is a 
sound and vigorous growth of genuine conviction. Theo- 
logians have been assuring you that the world would 
be intolerably hideous if you did not look through 
their spectacles. With infinite pains you have turned 
away your eyes from the external light. It is with 
relief, not regret, that you discover that the sun 
shines, and that the world is beautiful without the 
help of these optical devices which you had been 
taught to regard as essential. 

This, of course, is vehemently denied by all ortho- 
dox persons ; and the hesitation with which the 
heterodox impugn their assumption seems to testify to 
its correctness. ' After all,' the believer may say, with 
much appearance of truth, ' you don't really believe 
that I can walk by myself, if you are so tender of 
removing my crutches.' The taunt is fair enough, and 
should be fairly met. Cynicism and infidelity are 
supposed to be inseparably connected ; it is assumed 
that nobody can attack the orthodox creed unless 
he is incapable of sympathising with the noblest 
emotions of our nature. The adversary on purely 
intellectual grounds would be awed into silence by 
its moral beauty, unless he were deficient in reverence, 
purity, and love. It must therefore be said, distinctly, 
although it cannot be argued at length, that this 



AN APOLOGY FOR PLAIN SPEAKING. 333 

ground also appears to me to be utterly untenable. I 
deny that it is impossible to speak the truth without 
implying a falsehood ; and I deny equally that it is 
impossible to speak the truth without drying up the 
sources of our holiest feelings. Those who maintain 
the affirmative of those propositions appear to me to 
be the worst of sceptics, and they would certainly 
reduce us to the most lamentable of dilemmas. If we 
cannot develop our intellects but at the price of our 
moral nature, the case is truly hard. Some such con- 
clusion is hinted by Roman Catholics, but I do not 
understand how any one raised under Protestant 
teaching should regard it as anything but cowardly 
and false. Let me endeavour in the briefest possible 
compass to say why, as a matter of fact, the dilemma 
seems to me to be illusory. What is it that Christian 
theology can now do for us ; and in what way does it 
differ from the teaching of free thought ? 

The world, so far as our vision extends, is full of 
evil. Life is a sore burden to many, and a scene of 
unmixed happiness to none. It is useless to enquire 
whether on the whole the good or the evil is the most 
abundant, or to decide whether to make such an 
enquiry be anything else than to ask whether the 
world has been, on the whole, arranged to suit our 
tastes. The problem thus presented is utterly inscru- 
table on every hypothesis. Theology is as impotent 
in presence of it as science. Science, indeed, with- 
draws at once from such questions ; whilst theology 



334 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

asks us to believe that this ( sorry scheme of things ' is 
the work of omnipotence guided by infinite benevo- 
lence. This certainly makes the matter no clearer, if 
it does not raise additional difficulties ; and, accord- 
ingly, we are told that the existence of evil is a 
mystery. In any case, we are brought to a stand : 
and the only moral which either science or theology 
can give is that we should make the best of our 
position. 

Theology, however, though it cannot explain, or 
can only give verbal explanations, can offer a conso- 
lation. This world, we are told, is not all ; there is a 
beyond and a hereafter ; we may hope for an eternal 
life under conditions utterly inconceivable, though 
popular theology has made a good many attempts to 
conceive them. If it were further asserted that this 
existence would be one of unmixed happiness, there 
would be at least a show of compensation. But, of 
course, that is what no theologian can venture to say. 
It is needless to recall the Puritan divine, with his 
babes of a span long now lying in hell, or that 
Romanist priest who revels in describing the most 
fiendish torture inflicted upon children by the merciful 
Creator who made them and exposed them to evil, or 
any other of the wild and hideous phantasms that have 
been evoked by the imagination of mankind running 
riot in the world of arbitrary figments. Nor need 
we dwell upon the fact, that where theology is really 



AN APOLOGY FOR PLAINS PEAKING. 335 

vigorous it produces such nightmares by an inevitable 
law ; inasmuch as the next world can be nothing but 
the intensified reflection of this. It is enough to say 
that, if the revelation of a future state be really the 
great claim of Christianity upon our attentions, the 
use which it has made of that state has been one 
main cause of its decay. 6 St. Lewis the king, having 
sent Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, on an embassy, the 
bishop met a woman on the way, grave, sad, fantastic, 
and melancholic ; with fire in one hand and water in 
the other. He asked what those symbols meant. She 
answered, " My purpose is with fire to burn Paradise, 
and with my water to quench the flames of hell, that 
men may serve God without the incentives of hope 
and fear, and purely for the love of God." ' ' The 
woman,' adds Jeremy Taylor, ' began at the wrong 
end.' Is that so clear ? The attempts of priests to 
make use of the keys of heaven and hell brought about 
the moral revolt of the Eeformation; and, at the 
present day, the disgust excited by the doctrine ot 
everlasting damnation is amongst the strongest motives 
to popular infidelity ; all able apologists feel the 
strain. Some reasoners quibble about everlasting and 
eternal ; and the great Catholic logician ( submits 
the whole subject to the theological school,' a process 
which I do not quite understand, though I assume 
it to be consolatory. The doctrine, in short, can 
hardly be made tangible without shocking men's con- 



336 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

sciences and understandings. It ought, it may be, to 
be attractive, but when firmly grasped, it becomes 
incredible and revolting. 

The difficulty is evaded in two ways. Some amiable 
and heterodox sects retain heaven and abolish hell. 
A kingdom in the clouds may, of course, be portioned 
off according to pleasure. The doctrine, however, is 
interesting in an intellectual point of view only as 
illustrating in the naivest fashion the common fallacy 
of confounding our wishes with our beliefs. The argu- 
ment that because evil and good are mixed wherever 
we can observe, therefore there is elsewhere unmixed 
good, does not obey any recognised canons of induc- 
tion. It would certainly be pleasant to believe that 
everybody was going to be happy for ever, but whether 
such a belief would be favourable to that stern sense 
of evil which should fit us to fight the hard battle of 
this life is a question too easily answered. Thinkers 
of a higher order do not have recourse to these simple 
devices. They retain the doctrine as a protest against 
materialism, but purposely retain it in the vaguest 
possible shape. They say that this life is not all ; if 
it were all, they argue, we should be rightly ruled 
by our stomachs ; but they scrupulously decline to 
give form and substance to their anticipations. We 
must, they think, have avowedly a heavenly back- 
ground to the world, but our gaze should be restricted 
habitually within the visible horizon. The future life 
is to tinge the general atmosphere, but not to be offered 



AX APOLOGY FOR PLAIXSPEAKIXO. 337 

as a definite goal of action or a distinct object of con- 
templation. 

The persons against whom, so far as I know, the 
charge of materialism can be brought with the greatest 
plausibility at the present day are those who still force 
themselves to bow before the most grossly material 
symbols, and give a physical interpretation to the 
articles of her creed. A man who proposes to look for 
God in this miserable world and finds Him visiting 
the diseased imagination of a sickly nun, may perhaps 
be in some sense called a materialist, and there is more 
materialism of this variety in popular sentimentalisms 
about the ' blood of Jesus ' than in all the writings of 
the profane men of science. But in a philosophical 
sense the charge rests on a pure misunderstanding. 

The man of science or, in othe'r words, the man 
who most rigidly confines his imagination within the 
bounds of the knowable, is every whit as ready to 
protest against ' materialism ' as his antagonist. Those 
who distinguish man into two parts, and give the 
higher qualities to the soul and the sensual to the 
body, assume that all who reject their distinction 
abolish the soul, and with it abolish all that is not 
sensual. Yet every genuine scientific thinker believes 
in the existence of love and reverence as he believes 
in any other facts, and is likely to set just as high 
a value upon them as his opponent. He believes 
equally with his opponent, that to cultivate the 
higher emotions, man must habitually attach himself to 



338 FREETHINK1NG AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

objects outside the narrow sphere of his own personal 

experience. The difference is that whereas one set of 

thinkers would tell us to fix our affections on a state 

entirely disparate from that in which we are actually 

placed, the other would concentrate them upon objects 

which form part of the series of events amongst which 

we are moving. Which is the most likely to stimulate 

our best feelings ? We must reply by asking whether 

the vastness or the distinctness of a prospect has the 

greatest effect upon the imagination. Does a man 

take the greatest interest in a future which he can 

definitely interpret to himself, or upon one which is 

admittedly so inconceivable that it is wrong to dwell 

upon it, but which allows of indefinite expansion? 

Putting aside our own personal interest, do we care 

more for the fate of our grandchildren whom we shall 

never see, or for the condition of spiritual beings the 

conditions of whose existence are utterly unintelligible 

to us ? If, sacrifice of our lower pleaures be demanded, 

should we be more willing to make them in order that 

a coming generation may be emancipated from war 

and pauperism, or in order that some indefinite and 

indefinable change may be worked in a world utterly 

inscrutable to our imaginations ? The man who has 

learnt to transfer his aspirations from the next world 

to this, to look forward to the diminution of disease and 

vice here, rather than to the annihilation of all physical 

conditions, has, it is hardly rash to assert, gained more 

in the distinctness of his aims than he has lost (if 

indeed he has lost anything) in their elevation. 



AN APOLOGY FOR PLAINSPEAKING. 339 

"Were it necessary to hunt out every possible com- 
bination of opinion, I should have to inquire whether 
the doctrine of another world might not be understood 
in such a sense as to involve no distortion of our views. 
The future world may be so arranged that the effect 
of the two sets of motives upon our minds may be 
always coincident. Our interest in our descendants 
might be strengthened without being distracted by a 
belief in our own future existence. Of such a theory 
I have now only space to say that it is not that which 
really occurs in practice : and that the instincts which 
make us cling to a vivid belief in the future always 
spring from a vehement revolt against the present. 
Meanwhile, however, the answers generally given to 
sceptics are apparently contradictory. To limit our 
hopes to this world, it is sometimes said, is to encour- 
age mere grovelling materialism ; in the same breath 
it is added that to ask for an interest in the fate of our 
fellow creatures here, instead of ourselves hereafter, is 
to make excessive demands upon human selfishness. 
The doctrine it seems is at once too elevated and too 
grovelling. 

The theory upon which the latter charge rests seems 
to be that you can take an interest in yourself at any 
i distance, but not in others if they are outside the 
circle of your own personality. This doctrine, when 
boldly expressed, seems to rest upon the very apo- 
theosis of selfishness. Theologians have sometimes 
said, in perfect consistency, that it would be better for 

z 2 



340 FREETHINK1N& AND PL AINSPE AXING. 

the whole race of man to perish in torture than that a 
single sin should be committed. One would rather 
have thought that a man had better be damned a 
thousand times over than allow of such a catastrophe ; 
but,, however this may be, the doctrine now suggested 
appears to be equally revolting, unless diluted so far 
as to be meaningless. It amounts to asserting that 
our love of our own infinitesimal individuality is so 
powerful that any matter in which we are personally 
concerned has a weight altogether incommensurable 
with that of any matter in which we have no concern. 
People who hold such a doctrine would be bound in 
consistency to say that they would not cut off their 
little finger to save a million of men from torture after 
their own death. Every man must judge of his own 
state of mind ; though there is nothing* on which 
people are more liable to make mistakes ; and I am 
charitable enough to hope that the actions of such men 
would be in practice as different as possible from what 
they anticipate in theory. But it is enough to say 
that experience, if it proves anything, proves this to 
be an inaccurate view of human nature. All the 
threats of theologians with infinite stores of time and 
torture to draw upon, failed to wean men from sins 
which gave them a passing gratification, even when 
faith was incomparably stronger than it is now, or is 
likely to be again. One reason, doubtless, is that the 
conscience is as much blunted by the doctrines of re- 
pentance and absolution as it is stimulated by the threats 



AN APOLOGY FOR PLAIXSPEAKING. 341 

of hell fire. But is it not contrary to all common 
sense to expect that the motive will retain any vital 
strength when the very people who rely npon it admit 
that it rests on the most shadowy of grounds? The 
other motive, which is supposed to be so incomparably 
weaker that it canuot be used as a substitute, has yet 
proved its strength in every age of the world. As our 
knowledge of nature and the growth of our social 
development impress upon us more strongly every day 
that we live the close connection in which we all stand 
to each other, the intimate i solidarity ' of all human 
interests, it is not likely to grow weaker ; a young man 
will break a blood-vessel for the honour of a boatclub ; 
a savage will allow himself to be tortured to death 
for the credit of his tribe; why should it be called 
visionary to believe that a civilised human being will 
make personal sacrifices for the benefit of men whom 
he has perhaps not seen, but whose intimate depend- 
ence upon himself, he realises at every moment of his 
life ? May not such a motive generate a predominant 
passion with men framed to act upon it by a truly 
generous system of education ? And is it not an insult 
to our best feelings and a most audacious feat of logic, 
to declare on a priori grounds that such feelings must 
be a straw in the balance when weighed against our 
own . personal interest in the fate of a being whose 
nature is inconceivable to us, whose existence is not 
certain, whose dependence upon us is indeterminate, 
simply because it is said that, in some way or other, it 
and we are continuous ? 



342 FREETH1NKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

The real meaning, however, of this clinging to 
another life is doubtless very different. It is simply 
an expression of the reluctance of the human being to 
use the awful word ' never.' As the years take from 
us, one by one, all that we have loved, we try to avert 
our gaze ; we are fain to believe that in some phantom 
world all will be given back to us, and that our toys 
have only been laid by in the nursery upstairs. Who, 
indeed, can deny that to give up these dreams involves 
a cruel pang ? But, then, who but the most deter- 
mined optimist can deny that a cruel pang is inevitable ? 
Is not the promise too shadowy to give us real satis- 
faction ? The whole lesson of our lives is summed up 
in teaching us to say ' never' without needless flinching 
or, in other words, in submitting to the inevitable. 
The theologian bids us repent, and waste our lives in 
vain regrets for the past, and in tremulous hopes that 
the past may yet be the future. Science tells us — 
what, indeed, we scarcely need to learn from science — 
that what is gone, is gone, and that the best wisdom 
of life is the acceptance of accomplished facts. 



The moving finger writes, and having writ, ; ' •,,. ^ , 
Moves on> W all your pity-nor wit t 
Can aswe it back to cancel half a line, 
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it. 



jZt^AjL* 



Never repent, unless by repentance you mean drawing 
lessons from past experience. Beating against the 
bars of fate you will only wound yourself, and mar 
what yet remains to you. Grief for the past is useful 



AN APOLOGY FOR PLAINSPUAKING. 343 

so far as it can be transmuted into renewed force for 
the future. The love of those we have lost may 
enable us to love better those who remain, and those 
who are to come. So used, it is an infinitely precious 
possession, and to be cherished with all our hearts. 
As it leads to vain regrets, it is at best an enervating 
enjoyment, and a needless pain. The figments of 
theology are a consecration of our delusive dreams ; 
the teaching of the new faith should be the utilisation 
of every emotion to the bettering of the world of the 
future. 

The ennobling element of the belief in a future life 
is beyond the attack, or rather is strengthened by the 
aid, of science. Science, like theology, bids us look 
beyond our petty personal interests, and cultivate 
faculties other than the digestive. Theology aims at 
stimulating the same instincts, but provides them with 
an object in some shifting cloudland of the imagination 
instead of the definite terra firma of this tangible earth. 
The imagination, bound by no external laws, may 
form what rules it pleases, and may therefore lend 
itself to a refined selfishness, or to dreamy sentimen- 
talism. When we rise beyond ourselves we are most 
in need of some definite guidance, and in the greatest 
danger of following some delusive phantom. The pro- 
cess illustrated by this case is operative throughout 
the whole sphere of religious thought. The essence of 
theology, as popularly understood, is the division of the 
universe into two utterly disparate elements. God is 



344 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

conceived as a ruler external to the ordinary series of 
phenomena, but intervening at more or less frequent 
intervals ; between the natural and the supernatural, 
the human and the divine element, there can be no 
proper comparison. Man must be vile that God may 
be exalted; reason must be folly when put beside 
revelation ; the force of man must be weakness when 
it encounters Providence. Wherever, in short, we 
recognise the Divine hand, we can but prostrate our- 
selves in humble adoration. In franker times, when 
people meant what they said, this creed was followed 
to its logical results. The dogmas of the literal 
inspiration of the Scripture, or of the infallibility of 
the Church, recognised the presence of a flawless per- 
fection in the midst of utter weakness. The corrup- 
tion of human nature, the irresistible power of Divine 
grace, the magical efficacy of the Sacraments are 
corollaries from the same theory. In the phraseology 
popular with a modern school, we are told that the 
essence of Christianity is the belief in the fatherhood 
of God. That doctrine is intelligible and may be 
beautiful so long as we retain a sufficient degree of 
anthropomorphism. But as our conceptions of the 
universe and, therefore, of its ruler are elevated, we 
too often feel that the use of the word ' father ' does 
not prevent the weight of his hand from crushing us. 
If noble souls can convert even suffering into useful 
discipline, it is but a flimsy optimism which covers 
all suffering by the name of paternal chastisement. 



AN APOLOGY FOR PLAIN SPEAKING. 345 

The universe partitioned between infinite power and 
infinite weakness becomes a hopeless chaos ; and when 
we proceed further, and try to identify the Divine and 
the human elements amidst this intricate blending of 
good and evil we are in danger of vital error at every 
step. What, in fact, can be more disastrous, and yet 
more inevitable, than to mistake our corrupt instincts 
for the voice of God, or, on the other hand, to condemn 
the Divine intimations as sinful ? How can we avoid 
at every instant committing the unpardonable sin of 
blasphemy against the ineffable Holiness ? And if, 
indeed, the distinction be groundless, are we not of 
necessity dislocating our conceptions of the universe, 
and hopelessly perplexing our sense of duty ? 

Take, for instance one common topic which is 
typical of the general process. Divines never tire ot 
holding up to us the example of Christ. If Christ 
were indeed a man like ourselves, his example may be 
fairly quoted. We willingly place him in the very 
front rank of the heroes who have died for the good ot 
our race. But if Christ were in any true sense God 
or inseparably united to God, the example disappears. 
"We honour him because he endured agonies and 
triumphed over doubts and weaknesses that would 
have paralyzed a less noble soul. The agonies and the 
doubts and the weakness are unintelligible on the 
hypothesis of an incarnate God. Theologians escape 
by the old loophole of mystery, ordinary believers by 
thinking of Christ as man and God alternately. We can 



346 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

doubtless deceive ourselves by such juggling, but we 
cannot honestly escape from the inevitable dilemma. 
In paying a blasphemous reverence to Christ, theo- 
logians have either placed him beyond the reach of our 
sympathies, or have lowered God to the standard of 
humanity. Let us, if possible, dwell with an emotion 
of brotherly love on the sufferings of every martyr 
in the cause of humanity, but you sever the very root 
of our sympathy when you single out one as divine and 
raise him to the skies. Why stand we gazing into 
heaven when we have but to look round to catch the 
contagion of noble enthusiasm from men of our own 
race ? The ideal becomes meaningless when it is 
made supernatural. 

The same perplexity meets us at every step ; we are 
to follow Christ's example. Be humble, it is said, as 
Christ was humble. Theology indeed would prescribe 
annihilation rather than humiliation. Man in presence 
of the Infinite is absolutely nothing. Science, according 
to a glib commonplace of popular writers, agrees with 
theology in prescribing humility. But that very ambi- 
guous word has a totally different meaning in the two 
cases. Science bids us recognize the inevitable limita- 
tion of our powers, and the feebleness of any individual 
as compared with the mass. We can do but little : and 
at every step we are dependent upon the co-operation 
of countless millions of our race and an indefinite series 
of past generations. We are like the coral insects, 
who can add but a hair's breadth to the structure which 



AN APOLOGY FOR FLAINSPEAKING. 347 

has been raised by their predecessors. Yet the little 
which we can do is something ; and we will neither 
degrade ourselves nor our race. As measured by an 
absolute standard, man may be infinitesimal, but the 
absolute is beyond our powers. Science tells us that 
our little individuality might be swept out of existence 
without appreciable injury to the world ; but it adds 
that the world is built up of infinitesimal atoms and 
that each must co-operate in the general result. 
Theology crushes us into nothingness by placing us 
in the presence of the infinite God ; and then compen- 
sates by making us divine ourselves. Man is a mere 
worm, but he can by priestly magic bring God to 
earth ; he is hopelessly ignorant, but set on a throne and 
properly manipulated he becomes an infallible vice- 
God; he is a helpless creature, and yet this creature 
can define with more than scientific accuracy the precise 
nature of his inconceivable Creator : he grovels on the 
ground as a miserable sinner and stands up to declare 
that he is the channel of Divine inspiration ; all his 
wisdom is ignorance, but he has written one book of 
which every line is absolutely perfect : and meanwhile 
that which one man singles out as the Divine element 
is to another the diabolical, so strangely dim is our 
vision, and so imperceptible is the difference between 
the Infinite and the infinitesimal. 

Or, again, we are to deny ourselves as Christ denied 
himself. But what are the limits and the purpose of 
this self-denial ? Am I to carry on an indefinite war- 



348 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAK1NG. 

fare against the body, which you say that God has 
given me, and to crush the physical for the sake of the 
spiritual element ? What is the line between the spirit 
which is of God, and the body which is hopelessly 
corrupt ? All sound reasoning prescribes a training 
with the given purpose of bringing the instincts of 
the individual into harmony with the interests of 
the whole social organism. Theology trying to lay 
down an absolute law sometimes encourages the ex- 
tremes of asceticism ; sometimes it inclines to antino- 
mianism, and sometimes sanctions the condonation of 
sin in consideration of acts of humiliation. 

We are to resign ourselves to God's will, say theo- 
logians, but what is God's will ? If it is the inevitable, 
then theology falls in with free reason. But if God's 
will be, as theologians maintain, something which we 
are at liberty to resist or to obey, then resignation 
implies our ignoble yielding to evils which might be 
extirpated. Theology deifies the force of circum- 
stances, when our life should be a victory over circum- 
stances, and encourages us to repine over misfortunes, 
where all repining is useless. 

Christ, you say, died for us ; and Butler, in the book 
which still receives more praise than any other attempt 
at reconciling philosophy and theology, tries to show 
that here, at least, the two doctrines are in harmony. 
He has probably produced, in men of powerful intel- 
lects, more atheism than he has cured ; for he tries to 
demonstrate explicitly what is tacitly assumed by most 



AN APOLOGY FOR PLAIN SPEAKING. 349 

theologians — the injustice of God. The doctrine may 
be horrible, but he says that facts prove it to be true. 
His whole logic consists in simply begging the question 
by calling suffering, punishment. That the potter 
should be angry with his pots is certainly inconceiv- 
able ; but when you once attempt to trace the super- 
natural in life, it undoubtedly follows that God is not 
only weak with the creatures he has made, but pun- 
ishes the innocent for the guilty. Theologians may 
rest complacently in such a conclusion ; to unpreju- 
diced persons, it appears to be the clearest illustration 
of the futility of their theories. Free thought declines 
to call suffering a punishment ; but it admits and turns 
to account the undoubted fact, that men are so closely 
connected, that every injury inflicted upon one is 
inevitably propagated to others. If morality be the 
science of minimizing human misery, to say that 
sin brings suffering, is merely to express an identical 
proposition. The lesson, however, remains for us that 
we should look beyond our petty, personal interests, 
because no act can be merely personal. The stone 
which we throw spreads widening circles to all 
eternity, and to realise that fact is to intensify the 
sense of responsibility ; but the same doctrine trans- 
lated into the theological dialect becomes shocking or 
6 mysterious.' 

Finally, we are to love our brothers as Christ loved 
us. That, truly, is an excellent doctrine, but trans- 
lated into the theological, does it not lose half its 



350 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

efficacy ? Love them that are of the household is the 
more natural corollary from the Christian tenets than 
love all mankind. People sometimes express sur- 
prise that the mild doctrines of Christianity should be 
pressed into the service of persecution. What more 
natural ? 6 We love you/ says the theologian to the 
heathen, c but still you are children of the devil. We 
love men, but the human heart is desperately wicked. 
We love your souls, but we hate your bodies. We 
love you as brothers ; but then God, who so loved the 
world as to give His Son to die for it, has left the vast 
majority to follow their own road to perdition, and 
given to us a monopoly of truth and grace. We can 
only follow His example, and adore the mysterious 
dispensations of Providence.' 

' Ah ! ' replies a different school, ( that is indeed a 
blasphemous and hideous doctrine. We will not 
presume to divide the human from the divine. God 
is the father of all men ; His grace is confined to no 
sect or creed. His revelation is made to the universal 
human heart as well as to a select number of prophets 
and apostles. He is known in the order of nature as 
well as by miracles. The body has been created by 
Him as well as the soul, and all instincts are of heavenly 
origin and require cultivation not extirpation.' 

Whether this doctrine is reconcilable with Christianity 
is a question not to be discussed here. It certainly does 
not imply those flat contradictions of the lessons of 
experience which emerge from the other method of 



AN APOLOGY FOR PLAINSPEAKING. 351 

thought. It asks us to believe no miracles. It in- 
volves no supernaturalism. Whatever is, is natural, 
and is at the same time divine. Stated, indeed, as a 
bare logical formula, the doctrine seems to elude our 
grasp. It is intelligible to say that Christ was divine 
and Mahomet human, for the statement implies a com- 
parison between two different terms ; but if you say 
that Christ and Mahomet are both of the same class, 
what does it matter whether you call them both divine 
or both human ? Every logical statement implies an 
exclusion as well as inclusion. To say that A is B is 
meaniugless if you add that every other conceivable 
letter is also B. You attempt to make everybody 
rich by reckoning their property in pence instead of 
pounds, and the process, though at first sight attractive, 
is unsatisfactory. In fact, this phase of opinion 
generally slips back into the preceding. We find 
that exceptions are insensibly made, and that after pro- 
nouncing nature to be divine, it is tacitly assumed 
there is an indefinite region which is somehow 
outside nature. Few people have the reasoning 
tendency sufficiently developed to follow out this view 
to its logical result in Pantheism. Yet short of that, 
there is no really stable resting-place. 

Let us glance, however, for a moment at the ordi- 
nary application of the doctrine. The theologian agrees 
with the man of science in admitting that we are 
governed by unalterable laws, or, as the man of 
science prefers to say, that the world shows nothing 



352 FEEETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

but a series of invariable sequences, and coexistences. 
The difference is, in other words, that the theologian 
puts a legislator behind the laws, whilst the man of 
science sees nothing behind them but impenetrable 
mystery. The difference, so far as any practical con- 
clusions are concerned, is obviously nothing. The 
laws of Nature, you tell us, are the work of infinite 
goodness and wisdom. But we are utterly unable to 
say what infinite goodness and wisdom would do, except 
by showing what it has done. Therefore, the ultimate 
appeal of the theologian, is as unequivocally to the laws 
as the primary appeal of the man of science. He has 
made a show of going to a higher court only to be re- 
ferred back again to the original tribunal. History, 
for example, shows that mankind blunders by degrees 
into an improved condition and calls the process, pro- 
gress. Theology can give no additional guarantee 
for progress, for a state of things once compatible 
may, for anything we can say, always remain com- 
patible with infinite wisdom and goodness. As a 
matter of historical fact, theology only suggested the 
dogma of man's utter vileness, and all genuine theolo- 
gians are marked by. their readiness to believe in de- 
terioration instead of progress. They look forwards to 
a future world instead of this. But what reason have 
they to believe in this future of blessedness ? God's 
love for his creatures ? But the most prominent fact 
written on the whole surface of the world is what we 
cannot help calling the reckless and profuse waste of 



AN APOLOGY FOR PLAINSPEAKING. 353 

life. If everything we see teaches us that millions of 
individuals are crushed at every step by the progress 
of the race, and if that process is, as it must be, 
compatible with infinite goodness, why suppose that 
infinite goodness will act differently in future ? It is 
an ever-recurring but utterly fruitless sophistry which 
first infers God from nature, and then pronounces God 
to be different from nature. 

The only meaning, indeed, which can be given to 
the theological statement when thus interpreted is 
that we should accustom ourselves to look with 
reverence and love upon the universe. That love and 
reverence are emotions which deserve our most 
strenuous efforts at cultivation ; that we should be 
profoundly impressed by the vast system of which we 
form an infinitesimal part ; that we should habitually 
think of ourselves in relation to the long perspective 
of events which stretches far away from us to the dim 
distance and towards the invisible future, are indeed 
lessons which all sound reasoning tends to confirm. But 
when we are invited to love and wonder at the world, 
as the work of God, we must guard against the old 
trick of substitution which is constantly played upon 
us. Once more, the God of nature is turned into the 
God of a part of nature. Theology of the old stamp, 
so far from encouraging us to love nature, teaches us 
that it is under a curse. It teaches us to look upon 
the animal creation with shuddering disgust ; upon 
the whole race of man, outside our narrow sect, as 

A A 



354 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

delivered over to the devil ; and upon the laws of 
nature at large as a temporary mechanism, in which 
we have been caught, but from which we are to antici- 
pate a joyful deliverance. It is science, not theology, 
which has changed all this ; it is the atheists, infidels, 
and rationalists, as they are kindly called, who have 
taught us to take fresh interest in our poor fellow deni- 
zens of the world, and not to despise them because Al- 
mighty benevolence could not be expected to admit 
them to heaven ; to the same teaching we owe the 
recognition of the noble aspirations embodied in every 
form of religion, and the destruction of the ancient 
monopoly of Divine influences ; and it is science again 
that has taught us to accommodate ourselves to the 
laws in which we are placed, instead of fruitlessly 
struggling against them and invoking miraculous in- 
terference to conquer them. The theology of which 
I am now speaking, differs, indeed, radically from the 
old, so radically that one is at times surprised that the 
agreement, to use a common word, should reconcile 
vital differences in faith. But it often tends to the 
same end by a different path. It attempts to deny 
the existence of evils, instead of proclaiming their 
ultimate destruction. Everything comes from a 
paternal hand ; why struggle against it ? Disease 
and starvation and nakedness are, somehow or other, 
parts of a divine system which is somehow or other 
deserving of our sincerest adoration. If anybody who 
is in fact naked or sick or starving takes that phrase in 



AX APOLOGY FOR PL AIE SPEAKING: 355 

the sense that he had better submit cheerfully to evils 
■which he cannot help, there is little to be said against 
it. If the doctrine of the Divine origin of all things is 
compatible with the belief that a vast number of things 
are utterly hateful, that we ought to spend our whole 
energy in eradicating them, and to protest against 
them with our latest breath, then the doctrine is 
certainly innocuous. But whether there is much use 
in language thus employed seems a little questionable ; 
and, in any case, it is clear that it really adds nothing, 
except words, to the teaching of science. 

Here again people cling passionately to the old 
formula? because they appear to sanction a soothing 
optimism. We cannot be happy, it is said, unless we 
believe that our wishes will be fulfilled; and we 
endeavour to convert our wishes into a guarantee for 
their own fulfilment. If we cannot make up our 
minds to say e never,' neither can we resolve to admit 
that there is really evil. We passionately assert that 
the past will come back and that pain will turn out 
to be an illusion. The argument against the infidel 
comes essentially to this : you tell me that my hopes 
will not be realized, and therefore you make me 
necessarily and needlessly miserable. For God's sake, 
do not disperse my dreams. People are not satisfied 
with the answer that the nightmare has gone as well 
as the vision of bliss, and that fears are destroyed as 
much as hopes; because, as a matter of fact, they can 
contrive to dwell upon that part of the doctrine which 

A A 2 



356 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

is comfortable for the moment. We have power over 
our dreams though we conceal its exercise from our- 
selves. But the argument itself involves the funda- 
mental fallacy. To destroy a groundless hope is not to 
destroy a man's happiness. The instantaneous effort 
may be painful : but it is the price which we have to 
pay for a cure of deep-seated complaints. The infidel's 
reply is substantially this : I may destroy your hopes ; 
but I do not destroy your power of hoping : I bid you 
no longer fix your mind on a chimera but on tangible 
and realisable prospects. I warn you that efforts to 
soar above the atmosphere can only lead to disappoint- 
ment and that time spent in squaring the circle is 
simply time spent. Apply your strength and your 
intellect on matters which lie at hand and on problems 
which admit of a solution. The happiest man is not 
the man who has the grandest dreams but the man 
whose aspirations are best fitted to guide his talents : 
the most efficient worker is not the one who mistakes 
his own fancies for an external support but he who 
has most accurately gauged the conditions under which 
he is labouring. Trust in Providence may lead you 
to pass successfully through dangers which would have 
repelled an unbeliever, or it may lead you to break 
your neck in pursuing a dream. It makes heroes and 
cowards, patriots and assassins, saints and bigots who 
each mistake their wisdom or their folly for divine 
intimations. Providence for us can only be that 
aggregate of external forces to which willingly or un- 



AN APOLOGY FOR PLAINSPEAKING. 357 

willingly we must adapt ourselves. We should calmly 
calculate by all available means the conditions of our 
life, and then dare, without ignoring, the dangers that 
are inevitable. Through all human affairs there runs 
an element of uncertainty which cannot be suppressed, 
and we seek in vain to disguise it under names con- 
secrated by old associations ; there are evils which are 
only made more poignant by our efforts to explain them 
away ; and to each of us will very speedily come an end 
of his labours in the world. We can best fortify our- 
selves by recognizing and submitting to the inevitable 
and by anchoring our minds on the firmest holding 
ground. Science will tell us that by working with the 
great forces that move the world, we may contribute 
some fragment to an edifice which will not be broken 
down ; that to think for others instead of limiting our 
hopes to our petty interests is the best remedy for 
unavailing regret. We can take our part in the long 
warfare of man against the world, which is nothing 
else but the gradual accommodation of the race to the 
conditions of its dwelling-place. By so disciplining 
our thoughts that we may fight eagerly and hopefully, 
we have the best security for happiness, and not in 
encouraging an idle dwelling upon visions which can 
never be verified and which are apt to become most 
ghastly when we most wish for consolation. 

To the question, then, from which I started, it seems 
that an unequivocal reply can be given. Why help 
to destroy the old faith from which people derive, or 



858 FREETHINK1NG AND PLAIN SPEAKING. 

believe themselves to derive, so much spiritual solace ? 
The answer is, that the loss is overbalanced by the 
gain. We lose nothing that ought to be really com- 
forting in the ancient creeds ; we are relieved from 
much that is burdensome to the imagination and to 
the intellect. Those creeds were indeed in great part 
the work of the best and ablest of our forefathers; 
they therefore provide some expression for the highest 
emotions of which our nature is capable ; but, to say 
nothing of the low T er elements which have intruded, of 
the concessions made to bad passions, and to the 
wants of a ruder form of society, they are at best the 
approximations to the truth of men who entertained a 
radically erroneous conception of the universe. Astro- 
nomers who went on the Ptolemaic theory managed to 
provide a very fair description of the actual phenomena 
of the heavens ; but the solid result of their labours was 
not lost when the Copernican system took its place; 
and incalculable advantages followed from casting aside 
the old cumbrous machinery of cycles and epicycles in 
favour of the simpler conceptions of the new doctrine. 
A similar change follows when man is placed at the 
centre of the religious and moral system. We still 
retain the faiths at which theologians arrived by a 
complex machinery of arbitrary contrivances destined 
to compensate one set of dogmas by another. The 
justice of God the Father is tempered by the mercy of 
God the Son, as the planet wheeled too far forwards 
by the cycle is brought back to its place by the epi- 



AN APOLOGY FOR PLAINSPEAKING. 359 

cycle. When we strike out the elaborate arrangements, 
the truths which they aim at expressing are capable of 
far simpler statements ; infinite error and distortion 
disappear, and the road is open for conceptions 
impossible under the old circuitous and erroneous 
methods. 

We have arrived at the point from which we can 
detect the source of ancient errors, and extract the 
gold from the dross. One thing, indeed, remains for 
the present impossible. The old creed, elaborated by 
many generations, and consecrated to our imaginations 
by a vast wealth of associations, is adapted in a thou- 
sand ways to the wants of its believers. The new 
creed — whatever may be its ultimate form — has not 
been thus formulated and hallowed to our minds. 
We. whose fetters are just broken, cannot tell what 
the world will look like to men brought up in the full 
blaze of day, and accustomed from infancy to the free 
use of their limbs. For centuries all ennobling 
passions have been industriously associated w T ith the 
hope of personal immortality, and base passions with 
its rejection. We cannot fully realise the state of 
men brought up to look for a reward of heroic sacrifice 
in the consciousness of good work achieved in this 
world instead of in the hope of posthumous repayment. 
JNTor again, have we, if we shall ever have, any system 
capable of replacing the old forms of worship by which 
the imagination was stimulated and disciplined. That 
such reflections should make many men pause before 



360 FREETHINKING AND PLA1NSPEAKING. 

they reveal the open secret is intelligible enough. But 
what is the true moral to be derived from them ? 
Surely that we should take courage and speak the 
truth. We should take courage, for even now the 
new faith offers to us a more cheering and elevating 
prospect than the old. When it shall have become 
familiar to men's minds, have worked itself into the 
substance of our convictions, and provided new 
channels for the utterance of our emotions, we may 
anticipate incomparably higher results. We are only 
laying the foundations of the temple, and know not 
what will be the glories of the completed edifice. 
Yet already the prospect is beginning to clear. 
The sophistries which entangle us are transparent. 
That faith is not the noblest which enables us to 
believe the greatest number of articles on the least 
evidence ; nor is that doctrine really the most produc- 
tive of happiness which encourages us to cherish the 
greatest number of groundless hopes. The system 
which is really most calculated to make men happy is 
that which forces them to live in a bracing atmos- 
phere ; which fits them to look facts in the face and 
to suppress vain repinings by strenuous action instead 
of luxurious dreaming. 

And hence, too, the time is come for speaking 
plainly. If you would wait to speak the truth until 
you can replace the old decaying formula by a com- 
pletely elaborated system, you must wait for ever ; for 
the system can never be elaborated until its leading 



AN APOLOGY FOR PLAINSPEAKING. 361 

principles have been boldly enunciated. Reconstruct, 
it is said, before you destroy. But you must destroy 
in order to reconstruct. The old husk of dead faith 
is pushed off by the growth of living beliefs below. 
But how can they grow unless they find distinct 
utterance? and how can they be distinctly uttered 
without condemning the doctrines which they are 
to replace ? The truth cannot be asserted without 
denouncing the falsehood. Pleasant as the process 
might be of announcing the truth and leaving the 
falsehood to decay of itself, it cannot be carried into 
practice. Men's minds must be called back from the 
present of phantoms and encouraged to follow the only 
path which tends to enduring results. We cannot 
afford to make the tacit concession that our opinions, 
though true, are depressing and debasing. No ; they 
are encouraging and elevating. If the medicine is 
bitter to the taste, it is good for the digestion. Here 
and there, a bold avowal of the truth will disperse a 
pleasing dream, as here and there it will relieve us of 
an oppressing nightmare. But it is not by striking 
balances between these pains and pleasures that the 
total effect of the creed is to be measured ; but by the 
permanent influence on the mind of seeing things in 
their true light and dispersing the old halo of erroneous 
imagination. To inculcate reticence at the present 
moment is simply to advise us to give one more chance 
to the development of some new form of superstition. 
If the faith of the future is to be a faith which 

B B 



362 FREETHINKING AND PLAINSPEAKING. 

can satisfy the most cultivated as well as the 
feeblest intellects, it must be founded on an unflinch- 
ing respect for realities. If its partisans are to win a 
definitive victory, they must cease to show quarter 
to lies. The problem is stated plainly enough to 
leave no room for hesitation. We can distinguish 
the truth from falsehood, and see where confusion has 
been reproduced, and truth pressed into the service of 
falsehood. Nothing more is wanted but to go forward 
boldly, and reject .once* for all the weary compromises 
and elaborate adaptations which have become a mere 
vexation to all honest men. The goal is clearly in 
sight, though it may be distant; and we decline 
any longer to travel in disguise by circuitous paths, or 
to apologise for being in the right. Let us think 
freely and speak plainly, and we shall have the highest 
satisfaction that man can enjoy — -the consciousness that 
we have done what little lies in ourselves to do for the 
maintenance of the truths on which the moral improve- 
ment and the happiness of our race depend. 



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